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HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 



•^^/^^^ 



V5 



ON 



HEKOES, HERO-WORSHIP 



AND 



THE HEEOIC IN HISTORY 



BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 



EDITED, WITH NOTES AND INTRODUCTION, BY 
MRS. ANNIE RUSSELL liARBLE, A.M. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1897 

All rights reserved 

s 



y-f^ 4-4- 2.(0 



COPTEIGHT, 1897, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Norbjfloti 50«ss 

J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 

Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

In offering to the public this edition of " Heroes 
and Hero-Worship," the editor hopes that the an- 
notations may prove of some service not alone to 
students in schools and colleges, but also to the 
general reading public. 

The varied allusions to mythology, philosophy, 
history of all ages, the many quotations from 
recondite sources, when not readily found, have 
often discouraged the student of Carlyle, and have 
interfered with a thoroughly intelligent and pleas- 
urable reading of " Hero- Worship." The editor 
regrets her inability to elucidate all passages ade- 
quately; yet she: has endeavored to make the ex- 
planations and reading references suggestive and 
helpful for more scholarly, exhaustive study of 
Carlyle's essays on "The Heroic in History." 

Worcester, Mass., October 1, 1897. 



CONTENTS 

FAGE 

Introduction . ix 

Literary Summary and Bibliography . . . xxxi 

LECTUEE I 

The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism : Scandi- 
navian Mythology 1 

LECTURE II 
The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam . . 66 

LECTURE III 
The Hero as Poet. Dante ; Shakspeare . . . 104 

LECTURE IV 

The Hero as Priest. Luther ; Reformation : Knox ; 

Puritanism 154 

LECTURE V 

The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, 

Burns . . . . . . . . . 2t)6 

vii 



viii conti:nts 

LECTURE VI 

PAGB 

The Heko as King. Cromwell, Napoleon : Modern 

Revolutionism 262 

Summary « . 327 

Notes 339 

Index to Hero- Worship ...... 403 

Index to Notes and Introduction .... 407 



INTRODUCTION 

We read in Carlyle's journal, Oct. 10, 1843: 
" To have my life surveyed and commented on by 
all men even wisely is no object with, me, but 
rather the opposite ; how much less to have it done 
unwisely! The world has no business with my 
life ; the world will never know my life if it should 
write and read a hundred biographies of me. The 
main facts of it even are known and likely to be 
known to myself alone of created men.^' ^ 

When Carlyle, in his literary prime, expressed 
this independent attitude toward the public, he 
scarcely realized how often his wishes would be 
ignored. Even before his death, forced to yield to 
popular demand, he arranged for his biography. 
That work, committed to James Anthony Froude, 
and accomplished sincerely yet unwisely, has fur- 
nished a battle-ground for biographers and critics 
during the last fifteen years. 

In introducing this edition of " Heroes and Hero- 
Worship," it may not seem superfluous, in spite 
of the scores of critical volumes on Carlyle, to 
include a brief survey of his life and literary 

1 Froude's " Thomas Carlyle: Life in London," I. 1. 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

influence. For the authentic facts of Carlyle's 
life, we are largely indebted to Froude's four vol- 
umes of biography, compiled from such primal 
sources as Carlyle's journal, note-books, and letters.-^ 
If, however, Boswell has been lauded as the model 
biographer, Froude has been condemned more, per- 
haps, than any other literary executor. Despite 
his defensive tone iij. the last two volumes of biog- 
raphy, despite his earnest patience, students of 
Carlyle agree that Froude lacked sympathetic in- 
sight, not alone in publishing the " Eeminiscences," 
so sacredly entrusted, but also in his delineation 
of Carlyle's character. The latent humor, sym- 
pathy, nature-worship, affection, and friendship 
of Carlyle all seem submerged under the irony, 
doubt, misanthropy, and struggle of Froude's 
portrait. As David Masson aptly says, Mr. Froude 
has constantly the aspect " of a man driving a 
hearse." ^ 

Many friendly critics have tried to correct the 
lugubrious impressions left by Froude's very valua- 
ble memoirs. Among the best revelations of Car- 
lyle's character may be cited : the " Eeminiscences " 
and "Letters" edited by Professor Charles Eliot 
Norton, who has also compiled the "Goethe-Car- 
lyle " and " Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence " ; 
David Masson's " Carlyle Personally and in his 
Writings," Richard Garnett's "Life of Carlyle," 
H. J. Mcoll's " Thomas Carlyle," and Moncure 
D. Conway's " Thomas Carlyle." ^ 

1 See Bibliography for editions of these and other volumes. 

2 " Carlyle Personally and in his Writings," p. 17. 



INTBODUCTIOJSr XI 

The future "sage of Chelsea" was born at 
Ecclefechan, Dumfries, Dec. 4, 1795, of sturdy- 
parents, who have been immortalized in Carlyle's 
" Eeminiscences." Integrity, persistence, repressed 
affection, vehemence, and scorn characterized both 
father and son. Hatred of sham and devotion to 
bare truth were also inheritances from the stone- 
mason, James Carlyle, who, when urged to paint 
his house, answered scornfully : " Ye can jist slent 
the bog wi' yer ash-baket feet, for ye'll put nane o' 
yer glaur on ma door." l^ov should one forget — 
for Carlyle never did — the influence of the devoted 
mother who, in her quiet life, gave sympathy and 
counsel to her son in his varied moods and strug- 
gles. 

The Carlyles had a fixed ambition that their 
sons should have a broad education, — a racial as- 
piration so delicately portrayed in recent fiction by 
Barrie and "Ian Maclaren." Thoma^, accordingly, 
at fourteen, entered Edinburgh University and 
graduated without winning special rank or appreci- 
ation except from Professor Leslie of the mathe- 
matical department. Through the latter' s in- 
fluence, Carlyle gained an appointment as teacher 
of mathematics at Annan Academy. Later at 
Kirkcaldy and Edinburgh he continued his teach- 
ing and studies. 

Carlyle now formed his first warm friendship, — 
with Edward Irving, — and two important events re- 
sulted. Irving secured for his friend a position as 
tutor to Charles Buller, later to win brief renown 
as statesman, and thus Carlyle gained the advan- 



xii INTBOBUCTION 

tages of increased income and opportunities for 
study and travel. A second and more important 
introduction, in 1821, was to Irving's former pupil, 
the graceful, alert Jane Welsh. Carlyle was pass- 
ing through grave doubts as to his material and 
spiritual future. He early realized that he could 
not satisfy his father's ambition that "he should 
enter the kirk." Apprenticeship to law was also 
distasteful. His studies brought restlessness and 
longing, rather than peace ; his religious ferment 
was later revealed in " The Everlasting No " of 
" Sartor Eesartus." This recorded an actual ex- 
perience in Leith Walk, Edinburgh. Gradually he 
emerged from spiritual darkness into the reawak- 
ened life of " The Everlasting Yea." 

At this critical period, when teaching seemed 
drudgery to his aspiring nature, he began to study 
German literature. Within the masterpieces of 
Schiller, Eichte, Novalis, and Eichter he found new 
mental zest; and he gained personal inspiration 
from Goethe, his spiritual guide and "saviour." 
One cannot overestimate German thought as a for- 
mative influence in Carlyle's life. His philosophy, 
aspirations, and style, later to be embodied in " Sar- 
tor Eesartus " and " Her o-Wor ship," received the 
stamp and seal of his German masters. Immedi- 
ate results of his studies were " Life of Schiller " 
and translations of "Wilhelm Meister's Appren- 
ticeship and Travels " and " Specimens of German 
Eomance," published 1823-27. 

Meanwhile, Carlyle's dyspeptic moods, his " eat- 
ing of heart," tinged his correspondence with Jane 



INTRODUCTION Xlii 

Welsh from 1822-26. Though permeated with 
latent love and tenderness, these letters have not 
inaptly been called "a great legal argument/' in 
which the lovers discuss arrangements for their 
marriage and probabilities of future happiness. 
One is inclined often to utter indignant protests 
that such intimate relations in Carlyle's life 
should have been offered to public ridicule and 
distortion. No less unpardonable have been the 
curious inquiries into Carlyle's earlier associations 
with Margaret Gordon and Katharine or " Kitty " 
Fitzpatrick. The friends of each lady have claimed 
her as the original of " Blumine " in " Sartor Hesar- 
tus," though many traits of the literary creation 
closely resemble those of Jane Welsh Carlyle.^ 

Carlyle clearly gave his entire, unfaltering loyalty 
to the young wife whom he had married in 1826. 
Their first home was at Comely Bank, Edinburgh, 
where, through Jeffrey's friendly aid, Carlyle wrote 
articles for the Edinburgh Review, many of which 
were later collected in his "Miscellaneous and 
Critical Essays." His "Life of Schiller" and trans- 
lations had already found favor with Goethe, and 
a correspondence began which brought great happi- 
ness to the Carlyles and atoned, in a measure, for 
financial duress and the vain efforts to gain a 
University professorship.^ The early essays on 
German authors, followed by the fine analysis of 

1 See Westminster Review, August, 1894, " Carlyle and the 
Blumine of Sartor Resartus." 

2 " Goethe-Carlyle Correspondence," edited by C. E. Norton, 
London and New York, 1887. 



XIV INTRODUCTION' 

Burns,^ showed originality and scholarship, but 
were merely tentative efforts. An attempt to 
write a novel ended at the seventh chapter. This 
fiction, later published as " Wotton Eeinf red,^ was 
largely incorporated into Book II. of "Sartor 
Besartus." 

In his journal, Oct. 28, 1830, Carlyle wrote : 
"Written a strange piece on clothes,'' etc. This 
sentence chronicled the beginning of Carlyle's real 
literary power. Their Edinburgh home had been 
abandoned for Craigenputtoch, whose isolated loca- 
tion has caused so many anathemas against Carlyle. 
Financial stress brought them to this lonely farm- 
house, belonging to the Welshes, and here Carlyle, 
in truth an intellectual recluse, worked on his 
"Apocalypse of Soul," as "Sartor Eesartus" has 
been called. Mrs. Carlyle, in spite of exaggerated 
domestic trials, was proud and happy in the com- 
pletion of this " work of genius, dear." In the 
second lecture on " Hero- Worship," Carlyle empha- 
sized Mahomet's loyal memory of Kadi j ah, who 
" believed in me when none else would believe. In 
the whole world I had but one friend and she was 
that ! " It requires no great imagination to accept 
the analogy, found by critics, between this tribute 
to Kadijah's faith and Mrs. Carlyle^y^.. inspiration 
and encouragement. . :' 

Publishers, however, did not shar .^er tribute 
and " Sartor Eesartus " vainly sough^ ecognition. 
The actual financial struggles of Carlyle, with capital 

1 " Miscellaneous and Critical Essays," Vol. I. 

2 " The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle," New York, 1892. 



INTRODUCTION XV 

varying "from £5 to twelvepence/' were secondary 
to his mental gloom. No one can resist pity for 
Mrs. Carlyle, compelled to endure vexations and 
social starvation, yet does her martyrdom over- 
shadow sympathy for Carlyle's spiritual distress ? 

The wife needed an admixture of unemotional, 
unexaggerated frankness with her courage. With 
false pride, now and later, she concealed her disap- 
pointments and jealousies from the husband who 
lacked intuition, but who never failed in tender, 
deep affection. It is not strange that the revela- 
tions of her nervous sufferings, read in her journal 
after her death, should have caused a shock to Car- 
lyle's heart and brain. The Carlyles enjoyed many 
seasons of rare companionship and devotion, as their 
letters witness, yet they were both often unhappy, 
and the cause was not alone in Carlyle. They 
seemed to disprove the adage, " Similia similibus 
curantur " ; their traits were too similar, they sup- 
plemented not complemented each other. Mrs. 
Alexander Ireland has given a just analysis of the 
character of each,^ while John Burroughs, in pun- 
gent, graphic style, summarizes their traits in his 
essay, " A Sundav in Cheyne Row." ^ 

To return fron Carlyle's home life to his slowly 
developing litera ^ genius, we find him writing 
essays for Fras( ■ Magazine and other reviews. 
Some of the subjej^K^, Croker's Boswell, Cagliostro, 
Voltaire, and Diderot, doubtless proved incentives to 
the "French Eevolution " and lectures on " Heroes." 

1 " Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle." 

2 " Fresh Fields," pp. 241-243. 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

Tlie story of the reception of " Sartor Eesartus " 
by the public, when it appeared in Fraser^s Maga- 
zine in 1833, two years after its completion, has 
become so familiar that it needs no repetition. It 
gained, we are told, but two known admirers, 
Emerson and a priest in Cork. To-day, variously 
regarded as symbolic biography, philosophy, or 
prose-poem, " Sartor Resartus " has found a merited, 
unique place among literary masterpieces. 

Undaunted by critics' frowns, Carlyle had begun 
work on his "French Revolution,'' — first, however, 
removing his residence to the shrine so familiar to 
tourists, 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Few incidents 
in literary history have elicited more sympathy 
than Carlyle's loss by fire of the first manuscript 
volume of the history, which had been loaned to 
John Stuart Mill. Carlyle's natural irascibility was 
conquered by Christian forbearance in this trial. 
With dogged perseverance he rewrote the first and 
finished the second volume, declaring the work 
"came direct and flamingly from the heart of a 
living man." ^ 

This " French Revolution," published 1838, start- 
ling and epic, aroused the lethargic public to an inter- 
est in Carlyle. Its text seems the one which became 
more familiar in " Hero- Worship," " History is the 
biography of Great Men." Critics, then and later, 
have arraigned Carlyle for his extravagant hero- 
worship and his imaginative treatment of events at 
the expense of minor inaccuracies. Yet as a work 
of vivid dramatic force, George Saintsbury speaks 

1 Froude's " Thomas Carlyle: Life in London," I. 72. 



INTRODUCTION Xvii 

truly : " The French Eevolution of Carlyle is the 
French Eevolution as it happened, as it was. The 
French Revolution of the others is the French 
Eevolution dug iip in lifeless fragments by excel- 
lent persons with the newest patent pickaxes.'^ ^ 

Carlyle was still hampered financially, before and 
after the history was published, and, to increase his 
income, a course of lectures on German literature 
was arranged by certain friends, notably Harriet 
Martineau and Miss Wilson. This first experi- 
ment, 1836-37, was followed by three more courses 
on "Periods of European Culture," "History of 
Literature," and "Heroes and Hero-Worship." 
Portions of the lectures on "History of Literature" 
have been published in magazines, from notes taken 
by Thomas Anstey. A volume, containing notes on 
eleven of the twelve lectures delivered, was pub- 
lished recently by Professor J. Eaey Greene.^ Be- 
ginning with the classic authors, Carlyle traced the 
development of literature through mediaeval roman- 
ticism and eighteenth-century scepticism down to 
modern transcendentalism and social problems. 
Many themes suggest more detailed analysis in 
"Heroes and Hero-Worship" and, evidently, the 
earlier course was preparatory to his lectures on 
Dante and Shakespeare, Luther and Knox, John- 
son and Eousseau. The last and most successful 
course on " Heroes " included the only lectures 
revised and published by Carlyle. 

Biographers say that the lectures were attended 

1 " Corrected Impressions," by George Saintsbury, p. 54. 
2 " History of Literature," New York, 1892. 



xviii INTB OB UCTION 

by cultivated and fashionable audiences, numbering 
from two to three hundred. That Carlyle was ever 
a successful lecturer, if one gauges success by ora- 
torical skill and fine presence, no listener would 
affirm ; that his manner, like his thoughts, was fer- 
vent and potent, carrying his auditors with him to 
appreciation of lofty ideals and vehement remon- 
strances, none would deny. Carlyle's reminiscences 
of the lectures are both droll and pathetic, showing 
his indifference to the honors of the rostrum. 

" Our main revenue three or four years now was 
lectures in Edward Street, Portman Square, the 
only free room there was. Brought in on the aver- 
age, perhaps £200 for a month's hard labour. . . . 
Detestable mixture of prophecy and play-actorism, 
as I sorrowfully defined it ; nothing could well be 
hatef uller to me ; but I was obliged." ^ Again, in 
his journal, July 27, 1838, we read: "The lectures 
terminated quite triumphantly, thank Heaven ! . . . 
If dire famine drive me, I must even lecture, but 
not otherwise. Whoever he may be that wants ■ 
get into the centre of a fuss, it is not I. Preed ^ 
under the blue sky — ah me ! with a bit of brown 
bread and peace and pepticity to eat it with, this 
for my money before all the glory of Portman 
Square or the solar system itself. But we must 
take what we can get and be thankful."^ The last 
course on " Heroes " was delivered in May, 1840, and 
was considered a great success. Carlyle, with usual 
depreciation, called the lectures his "bad best." He 

1 "Reminiscences," Jane Welsh Carlyle, p. 261. 

2 Fronde's " Thomas Carlyle : Life in London," I. 121. 



INTRODUCTION XIX 

began at once to revise them for publication and 
they won ready sale. David Masson says they 
represented the climax to '' Carlyle's literary efful- 
gence.'' ^ A brief examination of the volume will 
be found in later pages of this introduction. 

Wearied by the labor of revision, Carlyle spent a 
few months in rest, — or restlessness, as it proved, — 
before beginning "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches." 
He paused in his researches to write rapidly " Past 
and Present," (1843) a partial reply to his earlier 
economic treatise, " Chartism." Though he had re- 
nounced the faith of Mill and his disciples, yet 
Carlyle's ideas for social and economic reform were 
always vague and unstable. Unquestionably, "Past 
and Present " pictured a vivid literary contrast be- 
tween medisevalism and modern England, yet it 
lacked continuity and practical influence. 

" Cromwell's Letters and Speeches," which ap- 
peared in 1845, was wholly unlike the "French 
Revolution" in scope and treatment. As in the 
»l^n5ture on Cromwell in " Heroes and Hero- Worship," 
iv;lrlyle greatly idealized his hero. True, he allows 
Cromwell to be his own biographer in the history, 
yet the editor carefully suppresses all "elucidations " 
which would be unfavorable to his subject. " Crom- 
well " was a monumental historical work, but it 
failed to startle and awaken the public like the 
pictorial " French Revolution." 

A period of doubt and of discontent with politi- 
cal affairs found expression in " Latter-Day Pam- 
phlets," 1850, severe upon the mercantile and utili- 

1 " Carlyle Personally and in his Writings," p. 60. 



XX INTR OB UCTION 

tarian " spirit of the age." This bitter gloom, how- 
ever, did not shadow an almost coeval work of friend- 
ship, " Life of John Sterling." Other friends of 
middle life who have, in many cases, paid grateful 
tribute to Carlyle, were Ruskin, Kingsley, Dickens, 
Mazzini, Browning, Tennyson, Maurice, and Masson. 
Emerson, also, whose visit to the Craigenputtoch 
home had seemed a benediction, came to England 
to lecture, 1847-48, and strengthened the warm 
friendship with Carlyle, which had never waned 
during the years of correspondence. 

Carlyle's last ambitious work was his " History of 
Frederick the Great." It proved, indeed, " labour and 
sorrow " ; for, in addition to the excessive research, 
Carlyle was early disillusioned regarding his " great- 
est of modern men." Dogged, though disappointed, 
he labored on for thirteen years, with two faithful 
assistants, and completed the last and sixth volume 
in 1865. To his journal he unburdened his soul 
in relief when he had finished that " unutterable 
book."^ A work which caused its author such 
travail failed to win spontaneous applause from 
the public. Its ponderous and somewhat disjointed 
structure, however, can never dim the many un- 
equalled scenes of brilliant, dramatic action, and 
Carlyle's " Frederick " ranks among the few great 
histories. 

The same year that " Frederick " appeared, 
Carlyle was chosen Lord Eector of Edinburgh 
University. Averse to all public honors, he was 
persuaded to accept this signal recognition and 

1 Froude's " Thomas Carlyle : Life in London," II. 241. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

found pleasure in tlie proud delight of his wife, 
whose later years of invalidism had evoked his 
anxious tenderness. Yet, at the very period of 
his triumph, came the fatal telegram, announcing 
Mrs. Carlyle's sudden death. 

For the surviving fifteen years of his life Carlyle 
accomplished little normal mental work. Lonely, 
morbid, reproachful, he wrote the " Eeminiscences " 
of Jane Welsh Carlyle, of Irving, and of Jeffrey. 
There is frequent evidence that Carlyle did not in- 
tend to have the " Eeminiscences," nor his broken- 
hearted journal-memories, given to the public. 
Explicit is the postscript, suppressed by Froude, 
wherein Carlyle doubts the wisdom of publication 
and forbids any portion to be published without 
" fit editing." ^ We must accept Proude's explana- 
tion,^ yet we must also deplore the lack of " fit 
editing" which has allowed a seeming stain upon 
the memory of one of the world's most upright and 
conscientious men. 

In addition to the " Eeminiscences," Carlyle's lat- 
est literary work included " Shooting Niagara " and 
a few other vigorous polemics, " Early Kings of Nor- 
way " and ^' Portraits of John Knox," the last two 
essays published jointly in 1875. He likewise 
revised his more complete works for collected 
editions.^ Eefusing knighthood and pension, he 
lived quietly at his Chelsea home, with his niece, 

1 See Richard Garnett's " Life of Carlyle," p. 157. 

2 Froude's " Thomas Carlyle : Life in London," 11. 348-352. 

3 The Library Edition, still standard, was published in London, 
1871-74. See Bibliography. 



xxil INTRODUCTION 

until his death, Feb. 5, 1887. By his request he 
was buried at Ecclefechan. 

How complex was Carlyle's nature! Graphic, 
poetic imagination, broad scholarship, keen insight, 
and interest in humanity's sorrows and enthusi- 
asms, tender, latent love, sardonic humor, delight 
in nature and animal life, unswerving faith in 
God and duty, — these traits were existent with 
vehemence, which often became pugnacity, doubt, 
gloom, undeveloped tastes, and perverted judg- 
ments. While Carlyle's character, with its noble- 
ness and its limitations, has been recognized at last 
by students, there is no such consensus of opinion 
regarding his literary influence. He has been 
eulogized as " the greatest seer of the century " ; 
he has been scorned as " a rugged peasant " whose 
unique denunciations created only a temporary and 
waning interest, i^nong contemporaneous critics, 
perhaps none has possessed more sympathetic judg- 
ment than the recently deceased Richard Holt Hut- 
ton. He has written detached essays upon Carlyle, 
which form a careful, historical study of his influ- 
ence not only upon the thought but also upon the 
literature of the age.^ Denying Carlyle's right to 
be called a " prophet,'' with a special message, he 
denominates him " a prophetic artist." The defects 
and weaknesses, the potency and influence of Carlyle 
are admirably summarized in this climatic period : 
" In origin a peasant, who originated a new sort of 

1 " Contemporary Thought and Thinkers," Vol. I., London 
and New York, 1894 ; also, " Modern Guides to English Thought 
in Matters of Faith," London and New York, 1891. 



INTR OB UCTION xxiii 

culture, and created a most artificial style full at 
once of affectation and genuine power; in faitli a 
Calvinistic sceptic, who rejected Christianity while 
clinging ardently to the symbolic style of the Hebrew 
teaching; in politics a pioneer of democracy, who 
wanted to persuade the people to trust themselves 
to the almost despotic guidance of Lord-protectors 
whom he could not tell them how to find ; in litera- 
ture a rugged sort of poet, who could not endure 
the chains of rhythm, and even jeered at rhyme; 
— Carlyle certainly stands out a paradoxical figure, 
solitary, proud, defiant, vivid. No literary man in 
the nineteenth century is likely to stand out more 
distinctly than Thomas Carlyle, both for faults and 
genius, to the centuries which will follow." ^ 

Among the most recent critiques upon Carlyle's 
literary rank is Frederick Harrison's "Carlyle's 
Place in Literature," which appeared in the Forum, 
July, 1894, and has since been embodied in book- 
form.^ Mr. Harrison has been a fearless iconoclast 
in this series of essays, defying many a reader to 
again firmly place his literary idol on its pedestal. 
He has, however, uttered many indisputable truths 
about the " Greater Victorian Writers." Mr. Har- 
rison considers Carlyle's influence historically; he 
notes its permanence thus far amid the fluctuating 
tastes of two generations. While convinced that 
the past has listened more reverently to Carlyle's 
teachings than will the future, yet he justly praises 
the literary beauties of the masterpieces. 

1 " Modern Guides to English Thought in Matters of Faith," 
pp. 44, 45. 2 See Bibliography. 



xxi V IN TR OB UCTION 

Among the truest friends of the Carlyles was 
Joseph Mazzini, and his letters to Mrs. Carlyle in 
her unhappiness are full of insight and help.^ 
Though Carlyle and Mazzini differed in political 
tenets, yet each recognized the sincerity and noble- 
ness of the other. In the British and Foreign 
Review, October, 1843, Mazzini published an essay 
on " The Genius and Writings of Thomas Carlyle." ^ 
This analysis had more than contemporary value, 
and has since been published in varied forms. As 
Mazzini attended some of Carlyle's lectures on 
"Heroes," and refuted some extravagant state- 
ments, the criticism has special pertinence to this 
volume. " In his vocation as a writer," said Maz- 
zini, "he fills the tribune of an apostle, and it is 
here that we must judge him." The critic empha- 
sized the negative quality of Carlyle's social reform 
principles, yet he recognized the service done to 
humanity by the bold attacks on formulism, sham, 
materialism, and selfishness. Carlyle compelled a 
study of social questions ; he awakened an interest, 
also, in the ethical and spiritual problems. Maz- 
zini ranked Carlyle as " a powerful literary artist," 
whose influence as teacher and prophet was dwarfed 
by his recognition of the individual only, — his 
emphasis of the history of " Great Men " to the 
exclusion of racial unity and progress of humanity, 
wherein Great Men are only " Marking-stones." 

In " Heroes and Hero-Worship " one finds cause 

1 Froude's " Thomas Carlyle : Life in London," I. 326, 328. 

2 Appendix to "The Socialism and Unsocialism of Thomas 
Carlyle," Vol. II., New York, 1891. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

for Mazzini's criticism of Carlyle's vague, one-sided 
ideas of reform. There are many " sins of omis- 
sion/' also, in the lectures. We seek vainly for 
a hero in art, science, or philosophy to chronicle 
" The Heroic in History." Prejudices and un- 
trained tastes often are responsible for lack of 
merited tribute and presence of unjust censure. 
Yet, on the whole, no volume of Carlyle's writings 
is more inspiring and less gloomy than " Heroes 
and Hero- Worship." Says Peter Bayne, in " Lessons 
from my Masters": "ISTo one of Carlyle's books has 
been more popular than the lectures on Heroes and 
Hero- Worship ; . . . the ethical element, and the 
earnest and spiritual religion, the impassioned sym- 
pathy with valor, devout self-sacrifice, all that is 
heroic in man, and the resolute determination to 
recognize nobleness under all disguises which per- 
vade this book, render it one of the best that can be 
put into the hands of young men." 

Thoreau, in his " Essay on Carlyle," regarded this 
book as his most typical volume.^ He said : " All 
his works might well enough be embraced under 
the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, 
^ On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in 
History.' Of this Department he is Chief Pro- 
fessor in the World's University, and even leaves 
Plutarch behind." 

Carlyle seeks to unite his six themes under one 
sequential subject, "The Heroic in History." He 
does not, however, avoid the impression of dis- 
jointed essays, each vivid and sharply outlined, 

1 " A Yankee in Canada," Boston, 1866, pp. 211-247. 



XXvi INTR OD UCTIOJSr 

yet defying assimilation into his general history. 
Despite his reiteration, "A Hero is a Hero at all 
points," ^ the careful reader finds it difficult to 
include in his category of " Heroes " such diverse 
characters as the mythical Odin, the questionable 
Rousseau, the disputed Cromwell, and the revolu- 
tionary Mirabeau. 

This very speculation, however, regarding Car- 
lyle's heroes may furnish one merit of the volume. 
The student is given incentive to broad and thought- 
ful historical reading ; he realizes that Carlyle is an 
inspiration, not a final authority in criticism. To 
quote Thoreau again : " No doubt some of Carlyle's 
worthies, should they ever return to earth, would 
find themselves unpleasantly put upon their good 
behavior to sustain their characters ; but if he can 
return a man's life more perfect to our hands than 
it was left at his death, following out the design of 
its author, we shall have no great cause to com- 
plain." 

There is great literary inspiration and delight in 
these essays. Carlyle's familiarity with mythology, 
with history, secular and religious, with literature, 
in its masterpieces and minor efforts, is attested on 
every page. Few authors can incorporate so many 
apt allusions from remote and familiar sources, so 
many quotations and renditions from classic and 
modern authors. Study of Glerman literature has 
borne fruit in direct and assimilated thoughts from 
Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Novalis, Fichte, and 
others. The man Carlyle, with his mingled humor, 

1 " Heroes and Hero-Worship," p. 37 : 12. 



IN TB OD UCTION XX vii 

pathosj scorn, and sympathy, is clearly revealed in 
such graphic passages as the story of Dante's wan- 
derings, the analysis of Burns and his "fire-flies," 
or the delicate, pathetic reference to Cromwell's 
mother. A pictorial and poetic imagination alone 
could paint such scenes as the description of Ice- 
land, the lurid panorama of Dante's " Inferno," or 
Luther's historic trial. 

" Heroes and Hero- Worship " contains many repe- 
titions of thought and phrase from " Sartor Resar- 
tus," and the " French Eevolution." There are also 
many suggestions expanded later in " Past and Pres- 
ent," "Latter-Day Pamphlets," "Cromwell," and 
"Prederick." He deplores dilettantism and scep- 
ticism with more regret and less denunciation than 
in " Past and Present " ; he denounces cant and 
quackery as responsible for many current evils. 
He urges gratitude for past heroes and confidence 
in future " Great Men," who symbolize the " divine- 
ness in Man and Nature." As usual " the dynam- 
ics," not " the mechanics," of life arouse his inter- 
est. In truth, the sage and seer, Carlyle, justifies 
John Morley's tribute : " One of Mr. Carlyle's chief 
and just glories is, that for more than forty years 
he has clearly seen and kept constantly in his own 
sight and that of his readers the profoundly impor- 
tant crisis in the midst of which we are living." ^ 

The diction of " Hero- Worship " is less startling 
than that of his other masterpieces, and yet it is 
unique and "Carlylese." The attitude of later 
critics toward Carlyle's style is significant. In by- 

1 "Critical Miscellanies," p. 196. 



xxviii INTB OB UCTION 

gone days Taiiie raised a general echo by denounc- 
ing it as " demoniacal." Progress of years, however, 
has given freedom of style as well as of thought. 
A brilliant author need no longer model his diction 
after the calm, impassioned Cicero or Addison. If 
the form is spontaneous and effective, adapted to the 
thought, critics will overlook, though they deplore, 
eccentricities, inversions, occasional barbarisms. No 
writer ever possessed a more individual and forceful 
style to express intense thoughts than Carlyle chose. 
If some phrases savor of affectation, and suggest too 
careful study of Eichter's peculiar forms, yet on 
the whole Carlyle must be classified as a literary 
artist of unique, chiaroscuric style. 

It may be difficult for the reader to forgive the 
unlicensed, erratic use of compound words and the 
strange inverted sentence-structure, yet to atone 
for these peculiarities we meet such aphoristic sen- 
tences as : "A man lives by believing something ; 
not by debating and arguing about many things." ^ 
" The sincere alone can recognize sincerity." ^ " The 
true University of these days is a Collection of 
Books."® "Adversity is sometimes hard upon a 
man; but for one man who can stand prosperity 
there are a hundred that will stand adversity." ^ 

Carlyle is a teacher and a preacher, if not a 
prophet and a seer. " Heroes and Hero- Worship," 
like all his writings, contains negations, contradic- 

1 "Heroes and Hero- Worship," p. 233: 28. 

2 "Heroes and Hero-Worship," p. 289: 31. 
8 "Heroes and Hero-Worship," p. 217: 19. 

4 "Heroes and Hero-Worship," p. 260: 14-17. 



tNTBODUCTtON XXix 

tions, incompleteness^ half-formed tastes, and over- 
grown prejudices, yet it brings an inspiring message 
to every reader. We read, in Carlyle's journal, that 
his auditors, in 1840, " Sate breathless or broke out 
into all kinds of testimonies of good will." ^ The 
defensive and fearless tributes which he paid to 
such heroes as Mahomet, Burns, Knox, and Crom- 
well, comparatively unknown and unvalued fifty 
years ago, have been accepted now as common 
truths. Other views and statements made by Car- 
lyle have been largely disproved by later scholars. 
The value of these essays, however, as incentive to 
scholarly reading and as revelation of Carlyle's 
magnetic thought and style, will ever remain, for 
in them he has spoken words of sincerity and hero- 
ism to each individual soul. 

1 Fronde's "Thomas Caiiyle: Life in London," I. 157. 



LITERARY SUMMARY AND BIBLIOG- 
RAPHY 

1795 Thomas Carlyle born at Ecclefechan, Dumfries, Dec. 4. 

1796 [Burns died at Dumfries.] 

1809 Carlyle entered Edinburgh University, intending to 

study for the ministry. 
1814 Teacher of Mathematics at Annan Academy. 

1817 Teacher at Kirkcaldy ; formed friendship with Edward 

Irving. 

1818 A season of study yet gloom at Edinburgh. 
1819-1821 Wrote sixteen articles for Edinburgh Encyclo- 
paedia ; influenced by German authors. 

1821 Beginning of acquaintance and correspondence with 

Jane Welsh. 

1822 Critique on Eaust in New Edinburgh Keview; trans- 

lation of Legendre's Elements of Geometry and 
Trigonometry. 
1822-1824 Tutor to Charles Buller; visits to London, 
Paris, etc. 

1824 Finished translation of Wilhelm Meister's Appren- 

ticeship and Travels, 3 vols. ; began correspondence 
with Goethe ; translation of Legendre with Essay on 
Proportion published. 
1823-1824 Life of Schiller in London Magazine. 

1825 Life of Schiller published in book form. 

1826 Married Jane Welsh, Oct. 17 ; lived at 21 Comely 

Bank, Edinburgh. 
1825-1827 Translation of Specimens of German Komance, 
including tales by Musseus, LaMotte-Eouqu^, Tieck, 
Hoffman, Richter, and Goethe ; published 1827, 4 

xxxi 



xxxii LITEBABT SUMMABT 

vols. ; seven chapters of incomplete novel, Wotton 
Reinfred, written ; essays on Goethe, Werner, 
Heine, etc., in Edinburgh Review and Foreign 
Review. 

1828 Residence at Craigenputtoch ; financial stress and men- 

tal gloom ; Essay on Burns in Edinburgh Review. 

1829 Essays on Voltaire, Novalis, and Signs of the Times 

in Foreign Review and Edinburgh Review. 

1830 Translation of Richter's review of L'Allemagne in 

Eraser's Magazine, also poem, Cui Bono ; Sartor 
Resartus begun, Oct. 
1830-1831 Vain search for publisher for Sartor Resartus ; 
poems, The Beetle, The Sower's Song, Tragedy of 
the Night-Moth in Eraser's Magazine ; acquaint- 
ance with Mill ; the Nibelungen Lied in Westmin- 
ster Review. 

1831 Characteristics published in Edinburgh Review ; Lu- 

ther's Psalm in Eraser's Magazine. 

1832 Death of father ; Reminiscences of James Carlyle ; Es- 

says on Johnson and Diderot in Eraser's Magazine 
and Foreign Quarterly ; [death of Goethe] ; essays 
on Goethe in Eraser's Magazine and Foreign Quar- 
terly. 

1833 Essay on Cagliostro in Eraser's Magazine ; Sartor 

Resartus published in Eraser's Magazine ; Emer- 
son's visit to Craigenputtoch. 

1834 Failure to secure professorship ; removal of Carlyles 

to 5 Cheyhe Row, Chelsea. 

1835 First volume of French Revolution burned and re- 

written. 

1836 Sartor Resartus published in America ; Essay on 

Mirabeau in London and Westminster Review ; 
The Diamond Necklace in Eraser's Magazine. 

1837 French Revolution finished and published. 

1837-1840 Courses of Lectures in London on German Lit- 
erature, History of Literature, and Heroes and 
Hero- Worship. 



LITER ABY SUMMARY xxxiii 

1838 Sartor Resartus published in England ; essays on 

Walter Scott and Yarnhagen von Ense's Memoirs 
in London and Westminster Review. 

1839 Chartism published ; Critical and Miscellaneous 

Essays, 4 vols., published (reprints of magazine 
essays) . 

1841 Heroes and Hero- Worship published. 

1842 Visits to Naseby and other scenes connected with 

Cromwell's history. 

1843 Past and Present published. 

1845 Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with elucida- 
tions, published, 2 vols. 

1847-1849 Years of unrest ; visit to Ireland. 

1850 Latter-Day Pami)hlets published, 

1852 First trip to Germany to gain material for History of 
Frederick ; second trip, 1858. 

1858 First two volumes of Frederick the Great. 

1865 Frederick completed, 6 vols. ; elected Lord Rector of 

Edinburgh University. 

1866 Inaugural at Edinburgh, April 2; Mrs. Carlyle's sud- 

den death, April 21. 

1866-1867 Years of sadness ; wrote Reminiscences of Jane 
Welsh Carlyle, Irving, and Jeffrey. 

1867-1870 Shooting Niagara and other political essays pub- 
lished. 

1871 Mr. Carlyle on the war ; reprints from letters in 

London Times. 

1872 Early Kings of Norway \ Published in one volume, 
1875 Portraits of John Knoxi 1875. 

1881 Died Feb. 5 ; buried at Ecclefechan, Feb. 10. 

An exhaustive bibliography of Carlyle, by John P. An- 
derson, is appended to Richard Garnett's Life of Carlyle, 
London, 1887 (Great Writers Series). The following refer- 
ences are designed to aid general reading, and include only 
Carlyle's important works and selected criticisms. 



xxxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. Library Edition — 34 vols. London, 1871, 8vo. 

Sartor Resartus. 

The French Revolution, 3 vols. 

Life of Schiller. 

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 6 vols. 

On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History. 

Past and Present. 

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 5 vols. 

Latter-Day Pamphlets. 

Life of John Sterling. 

History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, 10 vols. 

The Early Kings of Norway ; Portraits of John Knox ; a 

General Index. 
Translations from the German, 3 vols. 

Other editions of Carlyle's collected works are : 
The People's Edition, 37 vols. London, 1871-1874. 
The Ashburton Edition, 20 vols. London, 1885-1891. 
The Centenary Edition. New York, 1896-1897, 30 vols., 
8vo., now in publication. 

II. Editions of Single Works not included in Col- 
lected Works. 

On the Choice of Books ; the Inaugural Address at Edin- 
burgh. London, 1866. 

Last Words of Thomas Carlyle. Edinburgh, 1882 ; New 
York, 1891. 

Lectures on History of Literature. New York, 1892. 

Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, edited by 
Charles Eliot Norton. London, 1887 ; New York, 1887. 

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, edited by Charles Eliot Norton, 2 vols. Boston, 
1883. 

Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot 
Norton, 2 vols. London and New York, 1886. 



BIBLIOGBAPHY XXXV 

Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, edited by Charles Eliot 
Norton, 2 vols. London, 1887 ; 2 vols, in one. New York, 
1887. 

Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, edited by James An- 
thony Froude, 2 vols. London, 1881 ; 2 vols, in one, 
New York, 1881. 

Reminiscences of my Irish Journey in 1849. London, 
1882. 

III. Biography and Criticism 

Arnold, Matthew. Discourses in America ; Emerson and 

Carlyle. London, 1885. 
Bayne, Peter. Lessons from my Masters (Carlyle, Ruskin, 

Tennyson). London, 1879. 
Birrell, Augustine. Obiter Dicta. London, 1884 ; New 

York, 1891. 
Boyesen, H. H. Essays on German Literature, Goethe 

and Carlyle. New York, 1892. 
Burroughs, John. Fresh Fields. Boston, 1890. In Carlyle's 

Country, A Sunday in Cheyne Row ; Indoor Studies. 

Boston, 1893. Emerson and Carlyle. 
Conway, Moncure D. Thomas Carlyle. London and New 

York, 1881. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. English Traits, new ed. Boston, 

1894. 
Froude, James Anthony. Thomas Carlyle : History of First 

Forty Years. London and New York, 1882. Thomas Car- 
lyle : Life in London, 2 vols, in one. London and New 

York, 1884. 
Fuller, Margaret (Ossoli). Memoirs, Vol. II. Boston, 1874. 
Garnett, Richard. Life of Carlyle. London, 1887. 
Harrison, Frederick. Studies in Early Victorian Literature. 

New York, 1896. 
Hutton, Richard H. Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, 

Vol. I. London and New York, 1894. Modern Guides 

to English Thought in Matters of Faith. London and 

New York, 1891. 



xxxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ireland, Mrs. Alexander. Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle. 
New York, 1891. 

Masson, David. Carlyle Personally and in his Writings. 
London, 1885. 

Mazzini, Joseph. Essay on the Genius and Writings of 
Carlyle : Appendix to Socialism and Unsocialism of Car- 
lyle. New York, 1891. Also, in Life and Writings of 
Mazzini, Vol. IV. London, 1870. 

Mead, Edwin D. The Philosophy of Carlyle. Boston, 
1881. 

Morley, John. Critical Miscellanies, Ser. I. London, 1886. 

Nicoll, H. J. Thomas Carlyle. London and New York, 
1885. 

Kobertson, J. M. Modern Humanists. London, 1891. 

Saintsbury, George. Corrected Impressions. New York, 
1896. 

Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library, Vol. III. ; Carlyle's 
Ethics. London, 1892. 

Sterling, John. Essays and Tales, Vol. I. London, 1848. 

Taine, H. A. English Literature, Vol. IV. Edinburgh, 
1874. 

Thoreau, Henry David. A Yankee in Canada, etc. Bos- 
ton, 1866. 

Whipple, Edwin P. Essays and Keviews, Vol. 11. Bos- 
ton, 1856. 



ON 

HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP 

AND 

THE HEROIC IN HISTORY 



LECTURE I 

THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: 
SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY 

[Tuesday, 5th May 1840] 

We have undertaken to discourse here for a little 
on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our 
world's business, how they have shaped themselves 
in the world's history, what ideas men formed of 
them, what work they did ; — on Heroes, namely, 5 
and on their reception and performance; what I 
call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. 
Too evidently this is a large topic ; deserving quite 
other treatment than we can expect to give, it at 
present. A large topic ; indeed, an illimitable- one ; lo 
wide as Universal History itself. Eor, as I take 
it, Universal History, the history of what man has 
accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History 
of the Great Men who have worked here. They 
were the leaders of men, these great ones ; the mod- 15 

B 1 



2 LECTURES ON HEROES 

ellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of 
whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to 
do or to attain ; all things that we see standing 
accomplished in the world are properly the outer 
5 material result, the practical realisation and em- 
bodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great 
Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole 
world's history, it may justly be considered, were 
the history of these. Too clearly it is a topic we 

10 shall do no justice to in this place ! 

One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any 
way, are profitable company. We cannot look, how- 
ever imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining 
something by him. He is the living light-fountain, 

15 which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light 
which enlightens, which has enlightened the dark- 
ness of the world ; and this not as a kindled lamp 
only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the 
gift of Heaven ; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, 

20 of native original insight, of manhood and heroic 
nobleness ; — in whose radiance all souls feel that it 
is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you 
will not grudge to wander in such neighbourhood 
for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen 

25 out of widely-distant countries and epochs, and in 
mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we 
look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things 
for us. Could we see them well, we should get some 
glimpses into the very marrow of the world's his- 

30 tory. How happy, could I but, in any measure, in 
such times as these, make manifest to you the mean- 
ings of Heroism ; the divine relation (for I may well 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 3 

call it such) which in all times unites a Great Man 
to other men ; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my 
subject, but so much as break ground on it ! At all 
events, I must make the attempt. 

It is well said, in every sense, that a man's re- 5 
ligion is the chief fact with regard to him. (A man's, ^<rlv.. ^^ 
or a nation of men's, j By religion I do not mean . 
here the church-creed which he professes, the arti- 
cles of faith which he will sign and, in words or 
otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases 10 
not this at all. We see men of all kinds of pro- 
fessed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth 
or worthlessness under each or any of them. This 
is not what I call religion, this profession and asser- 
tion ; which is often only a profession and assertion 15 
from the outworks of the man, from the mere argu- 
mentative region of him, if even so deep as that. • ^ 
But the thing a man does practically believe (and 'W' 
|this is often enough without asserting it even to him- 
jelf, much less to others) ; the thing a man does 20 
)ractically lay to heart, and know for certain, con- 
cerning his vital relations to this mysterious Uni- 
verse, and his duty and destiny there, that is in 
all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively 
rdetermines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it 25 
may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the 
manner it is in which he feels himself to be spir- 
jitually related to the Unseen World or No- World ; 
land I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me 
to a very great extent what the man is, what the 30 
kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a 



4 LECTURES ON HEROES 

nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What reli- 
gion tliey had ? Was it Heathenism, — plurality 
of gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mys- 
tery of Life, and for chief recognised element 

5 therein Physical Force ? Was it Christianism ; 
faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the 
only reality ; Time, through every meanest moment 
of it, resting on Eternity ; Pagan empire of Porce 
displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness ? 

10 Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether 
there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life 
except a mad one ; — doubt as to all this, or perhaps 
unbelief and flat denial ? Answering of this ques-/ j 
tion is giving us the soul of the history of the man) i 

15 or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents' 

of the actions they did ; their feelings were parents \ 

of their thoughts : it was the unseen and spiritual 

in them that determined the outward and actual ; 

■ — their religion, as I say, was the great fact about 

20 them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it 
will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that 
religious j^hasis of the matter. That once known 
well, all is known. We have chosen as the first 
Hero in our series, Odin the central figure of Scan- 

25 dinavian Paganism ; an emblem to us of a most ex- 
tensive province of things. Let us look for a little 
( at the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary form of 
\ Heroism. 

Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this 

30 Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these 
days. A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delu- 
sions, confusions, falsehoods and absurdities, cov^ 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 5 

ering the whole field of Life ! A thing that fills us 
with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with 
incredulity, — for truly it is not easy to understand 
that sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes 
open, believe and live by such a set of doctrines. 5 
That men should have worshipped their poor 
fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks , 
and stones, and all manner of animate and inani- 
mate objects ; and fashioned for themselves such a 
distracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory lo 
of the Universe : all this looks like an incredible 
fable. Nevertheless it is a clear fact that they did 
it. Such hideous inextricable jungle of miswor- 
ships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, did actually 
hold by, and live at home in. This is strange. Yes, 35 
we may pause in sorrow and silence over the depths 
of darkness that are in man ; if we rejoice in the 
heights of purer vision he has attained to. Such J^ 

things were and are in manj^ in all menj^ in us too. V^^ 
Some speculators have a short way of accounting 20 
for the Pagan religion : mere quackery, priestcraft, 
and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did be- 
lieve it, — merely contrived to persuade other men, 
not worthy of the name of sane, to believe it ! It 
will be often our dut}^ to protest against this sort 25 
of hypothesis about men's doings and history ; and 
I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in 
reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by 
which man has ever for a length of time striven 
to walk in this world. They have all had a truth 30 
in them, or men would not have taken them up. 
Quackery and dupery do abound ; in religions, 



.w^ 



6 LECTURES ON HEROES 

above all in the more advanced decaying stages 
of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but 
quackery was never the originating influence in 
such things ; it was not the health and life of such 

5 things, but their disease, the sure precursor of 
their being about to die ! Let us never forget this. 
It seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, that 
of quackery giving birth to any faith even in sav- 
age men. Quackery gives birth to nothing ; gives 

10 death to all things. We shall not see into the 
true heart of anything, if we look merely at the 
quackeries of it; if we do not reject the quackeries 
altogether ; as mere diseases, corruptions, with 
which our and all men's sole duty is to have done 

15 with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as 
out of our practice. Man everywhere is the born/ 
I enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaism itself to 
have a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clear- 
sighted, rather sceptical Mr. Turner's Account of his 

20 Embassy to that country, and see. They have their 

belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence 

sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into 

f every generation./ At bottom some belief in a kind 

' of Pope j At bottom still better, belief that there 

25 is a Greatest Man ; that he is discoverable ; that, 
once discovered, we ought to treat him with an 
obedience which knows no bounds ! This is the 
truth of Grand Lamaism ; the ' discoverability ' is 
the only error here. The Thibet priests have 

30 methods of their own of discovering what Man is 
Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods : 
but are they so much worse than our methods, — 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 7 

of understanding him to be always the eldest-born 
of a certain genealogy ? Alas, it is a difficult thing 

to find good methods for ! We shall begin to 

have a chance of understanding Paganism, when we 
first admit that to its followers it was, at one time, 5 
earnestly true. Let us consider it very certain that 
men did believe in Paganism ; men with open eyes, 
sound senses, men made altogether like ourselves ; 
that we, had we been there, should have believed 
in it. Ask now. What Paganism could have been ? lo 

Another theory, somewhat more respectable, at- 
tributes such things to Allegory. It was a play 
of poetic minds, say these theorists ; a shadowing- 
forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and 
visual form, of what such poetic minds had known 15 
and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, add they, 
with a primary law of human nature, still every- 
where observably at work, though in less impor- 
tant things, That^what a man feels intensely, he 
struggles to speak-out of him, to see represented 20 
before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind 
of life and historical reality in it. Now doubtless 
there is such a law, and it is one of the deepest in 
human nature ; neither need we doubt that it did 
operate fundamentally in this business. The hy- 25 
pothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly 
to this agency, I call a little more respectable ; but 
I cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. Think, 
would we believe, and take with us as our life- 
guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport ? Not sport 30 
but earnest is what we should require. It is a most 
earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is 



8 LECTURES ON HEROES 

not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport ' 
to him ; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious / 
matter to be alive ! / 

I fiiid, therefore, that though these Allegory 

5 theorists are on the way towards truth in this 
matter, they have not reached it either. Pagan 
Eeligion is indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what 
men felt and knew about the Universe ; and all 
Eeligions are symbols of that, altering always as 

10 that alters : but it seems to me a radical perversion, 
and even mversion, of the business, to put that for- 
ward as the origin and moving cause, when it was 
rather the result and termination. To get beauti- 
ful allegories, a perfect poetic symbol, was not the 

15 want of men ; but to know what they were to be- 
lieve about this Universe, what course they were 
to steer in it ; what, in this mysterious Life of 
theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and to 
forbear doing. The Pilgrim's Progress is an Alle- 

20 gory, and a beautiful, just, and serious one : but 
1 l3onsider whether Bunyan's Allegory could have 
y^receded the Faith it symbolises ! I The Faith had^"' 
to be already there, standing believed by every- \J^ 
body ; -J- of which the Allegory could then become a 

25 shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say 
a sportfid shadow, a mere play of the Fancy, in 
comparison with that awful Fact and scientific cer- 
tainty which it poetically strives to emblem. ( The 
Allegory is the product of the certainty,' not the 

30 producer of it ; not in Bunyan's nor in any other 
case. For Paganism, therefore, we have still to in- 
quire, ^^^lience came that scientific certainty, the 



TSll HERO AS DIVimTY 9 

parent of suck a bewildered heap of . allegories, 
errors, and confusions ? How was it, what was it ? 
Surely it were a foolish, attempt to pretend ' ex- 
plaining,' in this place, or in any place, siich a 
phenomenon as that far-distant distracted cloudy 5 
imbroglio of Paganism, — more like a cloudfield 
than a distant continent of firm land and facts ! 
It is no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought 
to understand that this seeming cloudfield was once 
a reality ; that not poetic allegory, least of all that lo 
dupery and deception was the origin of it. Men, I 
say, never did believe idle songs, never risked their 
soul's life on allegories : men in all times, espe- 
cially in early earnest times, have had an instinct for 
detecting quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try 15 
if, leaving out both the quack theory and the alle- -;"- 
gory one, and listening with affectionate attention '^i 
to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, 
we cannot ascertain so much as this at least. That 
there was a kind of fact at the heart of them ; that 20 
they too were not mendacious and distracted, but in 
their own poor way true and sane ! 

You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man 
who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, 
and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to 25 
see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, his 
rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness 
with indifference ! With the free open sense of a 
child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole 
heart would be kindled by that sight, he would dis- 30 
cern it well to be Godlike, his soul would fall down 



10 LECTURES ON HEROES 

in worship before it. Now, just such a childlike 
greatness was in the primitive nations. The first 
Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that 
began to think, was precisely this child-man of 
5 Plato's. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth 
and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name 
to him ; he had not yet united under a name the in- 
finite variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, 
which we now collectively name Universe, Nature 

10 or the like, — and so with a name dismiss it from 
us. To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new? 
not veiled under names or formulas ; it stood naked, 
flashing-in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeak- 
able. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker 

15 and Prophet it forever is, p7'efe?'natural. This green 
flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, 
rivers, many-sounding seas ; — that great deep sea 
of azure that swims overhead ; the winds sweeping 
through it; the black cloud fashioning itself to- 

20 gether, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; 
what is it ? Ay, what ? At bottom we do not yet 
know ; we can never know at all. It is not by our 
superior insight that we escape the difficulty ; it is 
by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of 

25 insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to 
wonder at it. Hardened round us, encasing wholly 
every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, 
hearsays, mere words. We call that fire of the 
black thunder-cloud ' electricity,' and lecture learn- 

30 edly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass 
and silk : but wJiat is it ? What made it ? Whence 
comes it ? Whither goes it ? Science has done 



TEE HERO AS DIVINITY 11 

much for us ; but it is a poor science that would 
hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of 
Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which 
all science swims as a mere superficial film. This\ 
world, after all our science and sciences, is still 
a miracle ; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, 
to whosoever will think of it. 

That great mystery of Time, were there no other ; 
the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called 
Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all- 10 
embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the 
Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions 
which are, and then are not : this is forever very 
literally a miracle ; a thing to strike us dumb, — 
for we have no word to speak about it. This Uni- 15 
verse, ah me — what could the wild man know of 
it ; what can we yet know ? That it is a Force, 
and thousandfold Complexity of Forces; a Force 
vwhich is not we. That is all ; it is not we, it is alto- 
gether different from us. Force, Force, everywhere feo 
Force ; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre I 
of that. ^ There is not a leaf rotting on the highway 
but has Force in it : how else could it rot ? ' Nay 
surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were 
possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimit- 25 
able whirlwind of Force, which envelops us here; 
never-resting whirlwind, high as Immensity, old as 
Eternity. What is it ? God's creation, the religious 
people answer ; it is the Almighty God's ! Atheistic 
science babbles poorly of it, with scientific nomencla- 30 
tures, experiments and what-not, as if it were a poor 
dead thing, to be bottled-up in Ley den jars and sold 



^ 



12 LECTURES ON HEROES 

over counters ; but the natural sense of man, in all 
times, if lie will honestly apply liis sense, proclaims 
it to be a living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike 
thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after 
5 never so much science, is awe, devout prostration 
and humility of soul ; worship if not in words, then 
in silence. 

But now I remark farther : What in such a time 
as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, 

10 namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout 
wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays, 
— this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered 
with these things, did for itself. The world, which 
is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to 

15 whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood 
bare before it face to face. ^All was Godlike or 
God : ' — Jean Paul still finds it so ; the giant Jean 
Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays : but 
there then were no hearsays. Canopus shining-down 

20 over the desert, with its blue diamond brightness 
(that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter 
than we ever witness here), would pierce into the 
heart of the wild Ishmaelitish man, whom it was 

/ guiding through the solitary waste there. To his 

25 wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for 
any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, 
glancing-out on him from the great deep Eternity ; 
revealing the inner Splendour to him. Cannot we 
understand how these men loorshipped Canopus ; be- 

30 came what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars ? 
Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. 
Worship is transcendent Avonder ; Avonder for which 



THE HEBO AS DIVINITY 13 

there is now no limit or measure ; that is worship. 
To these primeval men, all things and everything 
they saw exist beside them were an emblem of the 
Godlike, of some God. 

And look what perennial fibre of truth was in 5 
that. To us also, through every star, through 
every blade of grass, is not a God made visible, if 
we will open our minds and eyes ? We do not 
worship in that way now : but is it not reckoned 
still a merit, proof of what we call a ' poetic nature,' 10 
that we recognise how every object has a divine] 
beauty in it; how every object still verily is 'a 
window through which we may look into Infinitude 
itself ' ? He that can discern the loveliness of 
things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of Genius, 15 
gifted, loveable. These poor Sabeans did even what 
he does, — in their own fashion. That they did it, 
in what fashion soever, was a merit : better than 
what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse 
and camel did, — namely, nothing ! 20 

But now if all things whatsoever that we look 
upon are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add 
that more so, than any of them is man such an em- 
blem. You have heard of St. Chrysostom's cele- 
brated saying in reference to the Shekinah, or Ark 25 
of Testimony, visible Revelation of God, among the 
Hebrews : " The true Shekinah is Man ! " Yes, it 
is even so : this is no vain phrase ; it is veritably 
so. The essence of our being, the mystery in us 
that calls itself " I," — ah, what words have we for 30 
such things ? — is a breath of Heaven ; the Highest 
Being reveals himself in man. This body, these 




14 LECTURES ON HEROES 

faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture 
for that Unnamed ? ' There is but one Temple in 
' the Universe,' says the devout Novalis, ^ and that 
' is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than that 
5 'high form. Bending before men is a reverence 
' done to this Eevelation in the Flesh. We touch 
' Heaven when we lay our hand on a human body ! ' 
This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric ; 
but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out 

10 to be a scientific fact ; the expression, in such words 
as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We 
are the miracle of miracles, — the great inscrutable 
mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we 
know not how to speak of it ; but we may feel and 

15 know, if we like, that it is verily so. 

Well; these truths were once more readily felt 
than now. The young generations of the world, 
who had in them the freshness of young children, 
and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think 

20 that they had finished-off all things in Heaven and 
Earth by merely giving" them scientific names, but 
had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and 
wonder : they felt better what of divinity is in 
man and Nature ; — they, without being mad, could 

25 worship Nature, and man more than anything else 
in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above, ad- 
mire without limit : this, in the full use of their 
faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they could do. 
I consider Hero-worship to be the grand modifying 

30 element in that ancient system of thought. What 
I call the perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we 
may say, out of many roots ; every admiration, adora- 



TEE HERO AS DIVINITY 15 

tion of a star, or natural object, was a root or fibre 
of a root ; but Hero-worship is the deepest root of 
all ; the tap-root, from which in a great degree all 
the rest were nourished and grown. 

And now if worship even of a star had some 5 
meaning in it, how much more might that of a 
Hero ! Worship of a Hero is transcendent admira- ■ . 
tion of a Great Man. I say great men are still ad- l( 
mirable; I say there is, at bottom, nothing else U 
admirable ! No nobler feeling than this of admiration lO 
for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of 
man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivi- 
fying influence in man's life. E/Cligion I find stand 
upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and 
truer religions, — all religion hitherto known. Hero- 15 
worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submission, 
burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Porm of 
Man, — is not that the germ of Christianity itself ? 
The greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we do 
not name here ! Let sacred silence meditate that 20 
sacred matter ; you will find it the ultimate perfec- 
tion of a principle extant throughout man's whole 
history on earth. 

Or coming into lower, less unspeakable provinces, 
is not all Loyalty akin to religious Eaith also? 25 
Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some 
spiritual Hero. And what therefore is loyalty 
proper, the life-breath of all society, but an efflu- 
ence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for 
the truly great ? Society is founded on Hero-wor- so 
ship. All dignities of rank, on which human asso- 
ciation rests, are what we may call a JETeroarchy 



16 LECTURES ON HEROES 

(Government of Heroes), — or a Hierarcliy, for it 
is ^sacred' enough withal! The Duke means Dux, 
Leader; King is Kon-ning, Kan-ning, Man that 
knows or cans. Society everywhere is some repre- 

5 sentation, not wsupportably inaccurate, of a gradu- 
ated Worship of Heroes ; — reverence and obedience 
done to men really great and wise. Not msupport- 
ably inaccurate, I say ! They are all as bank-notes, 
these social dignitaries, all representing gold; — 

10 and several of them, alas, always are forged notes. 
We can do with some forged false notes ; with a 
good many even ; but not with all, or the- most of 
them forged ! No : there have to come revolutions 
then; cries of Democracy, Liberty and Equality, 

15 and I know not what : — the notes being all false, 
and no gold to be had for them, people take to cry- 
ing in their despair that there is no gold, that there 
never was any ! — ' Gold,' Hero-worship, is neverthe- 
less, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot 

20 cease till man himself ceases. 

I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, 
the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have 
gone out, and finally ceased. This, for reasons 
which it will be worth while some time to inquire 

25 into, is an age that as it were denies the existence 
of great men; denies the desirableness of great men. 
Show our critics a great man, a Luther for example, 
they begin to what they call ' account ' for him ; 
not to worship him, but take the dimensions of him, 

30 — and bring him out to be a little kind of man ! 
He was the ^ creature of the Time,' they say ; the 
Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 17 

nothing — but what we the little critic could have 
done too ! This seems to me but melancholy work. 
The Time call forth ? Alas, we have known 
Times call loudly enough for their great man ; but 
not find him when they called ! He was not there ; 5 
Providence had not sent him ; the Time, calling its 
loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck 
because he would not come when called. 

For if we will think of it, no Time need have 
gone to ruin, could it have found a man great lo 
enough, a man wise and good enough : wisdom to 
discern truly what the Time wanted, valour to lead 
it on the right road thither ; these are the salvation 
of any Time. But I liken common languid Times, 
with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their 15 
languid doubting characters and embarrassed cir- 
cumstances, impotently crumbling-down into ever 
worse distress towards final ruin ; — all this I liken 
to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of 
Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with 20 
his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the 
lightning. His word is the wise healing word 
which all can believe in. All blazes round him 
now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like 
his own. The dry mouldering sticks are thought 25 
to have called him forth. They did want him 
greatly ; but as to calling him forth — ! — Those are 
critics of small vision, I think, who cry : " See, is it 
not the sticks that made the fire ? 'V No sadder 
proof can be given by a man of his own littleness 30 
than disbelief in great men. \ There is no sadder 
symptom of a generation than such general blind- 



18 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

ness to the spiritual lightning, with faith only in 
the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the last con- 
summation of unbelief. In all epochs of the world's 
history, we shall find the Great Man to have been 

5 the indispensable saviour of his epoch ; — the light- 
ning, without which the fuel never would have 
burnt. ( The History of the World, I said already, 
was the Biography of Great Mem. 

"^ , Such small critics do what they can to promote 

10 unbelief and universal spiritual paralysis : but hap- 
pily they cannot always completely succeed. In all 
times it is possible for a man to arise great enough 
to feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras 
and cobwebs. And what is notable, in no time what- 

15 ever can they entirely eradicate out of living men's 
hearts a certain altogether peculiar reverence for 
Great Men ; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, 
however dim and perverted it may be. Hero-wor- 
ship endures forever while man endures. Boswell 

20 venerates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eigh- 
teenth century. The unbelieving French believe in 
their Voltaire ; and burst-out round him into very 
curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life 
when they ' stifle him under roses.' It has always 

25 seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire. 
Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of 
Hero-worship, then we may find here in Voltaireism 
one of the lowest ! He whose life was that of a 
kind of Antichrist, does again on this side exhibit 

30 a curious contrast. No people ever were so little 
prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire. 
Persiflage was the character of their whole mind; 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 19 

adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see ! The 
old man of Ferney comes up to Paris 5 an old, totter- 
ing, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel 
that he too is a kind of Hero ; that he has spent 
his life in opposing error and injustice, delivering 5 
Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places ; — 
in short that he too, though in a strange way, has 
fought like a valiant man. They feel withal that, 
if persiflage be the great thing, there never was such 
2i persifleur. He is the realised ideal of every one 10 
of them ; the thing they are all wanting to be ; of 
all Frenchmen the most French. He is properly 
their god, — such god as they are fit for. Accord- 
ingly all persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the 
Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they not wor- 15 
ship him ? People of quality disgiiise themselves 
as tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a 
broad oath, orders his Postillion, "Fa bon train ; 
thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his 
carriage is * the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills 20 
whole streets.' The ladies pluck a hair or two from 
his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic. There was 
nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, 
that did not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, 
^obler,^ 25 

^Yes » from Norse Odin to English Samuel John- 
son, from the divine Founder of Christianity to the 
withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times and 
places, the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever 
be so. We all love great men ; love, venerate and 30 
bow down submissive before great men : nay can 
we honestly bow down to anything else ? Ah, does 



20 LECTURES ON HEROES 

not every true man feel he is himself made higher 
by doing reverence to what is really above him ? 
No nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's 
heart. And to me it is very cheering to consider 
5 that no sceptical logic, or general triviality, insin- 
cerity and aridity of any Time and its influences 
can destroy this noble inborn loyalty and worship 
that is in man. In times of unbelief, which soon 
have to become times of revolution, much down- 

10 rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin is visible to 
everybody. For myself in these days, I seem to 
see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship the 
everlasting adamant lower than which the confused 
wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The con- 

15 fused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing 
and tumbling all round us in these revolutionary 
ages, will get down so far; no farther. It is an 
eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to 
build themselves up again. That man, in some 

20 sense or other, worships Heroes ; that we all of us 
reverence and must ever reverence Great Men : this 
is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings-down 
whatsoever ; — the one fixed point in modern revo- 
lutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and 

25 shoreless. 

So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete 
vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in 
the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, 
the revelation of the workings of God ; the Hero is 
30 still worshipable : this, under poor cramped incipi- 
ent forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 21 

as they could, to set forth. I think Scandinavian 
Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any 
other. It is, for one thing, the latest ; it continued 
in these regions of Europe till the eleventh century : 
eight hundred years ago the Norwegians were still 5 
worshippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the 
creed of our fathers ; the men whose blood still runs | 
in our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so 
many ways. Strange : they did believe that, while 
we believe so differently. Let us look a little at 10 
this poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have 
tolerable means to do it ; for there is another point 
of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies : that 
they have been preserved so well. 

In that strange island Iceland, — burst-up, the 15 
geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea ; a 
wild land of barrenness and lava ; swallowed many 
months of every year in black tempests, yet with a 
wild gleaming beauty in summer-time ; towering up 
there, stern and grim, in the North Ocean ; with its 20 
snow jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur-pools and hor- 
rid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battle- 
field of Frost and Fire ; — where of all places we 
least looked for Literature or written memorials, 
the record of these things was written down. On 25 
the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy \ 
country where cattle can subsist, and men by means / 
of them and of what the sea yields ; and it seems 
they were poetic men these, men who had deep 
thoughts in them, and uttered musically their 30 
thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland not 
been burst-up from the sea, not been discovered by 



22 LECTURES ON HEROES 

the Northmen ! The ol^ Norse Poets were many 
of them natives of Iceland. 

Ssemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, 
who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Pagan- 

5 ism, collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just 
about becoming obsolete then, — Poems or Chants 
of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious 
character : that is what Norse critics call the Elder 
or Poetic Edda. Edda, a word of uncertain etymol- 

10 ogy, is thought to signify Ancestress. Snorro Sturle- 
son, an Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable 
personage, educated by this Ssemund's grandson, 
took in hand next, near a century afterwards, to 
put together, among several other books he wrote, 

15 a kind of Prose Synopsis of the whole Mythol- 
ogy; elucidated by new fragments of traditionary 
verse. A work constructed really with great in- 
genuity, native talent, what one might call uncon- 
scious art; altogether a perspicuous clear work, 

20 pleasant reading still : this is the Younger or Prose 
Edda. By these and the numerous other Sagas, 
mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic 
or not, which go on zealously in the North to this 
day, it is possible to gain some direct insight even 

25 yet; and see that old Norse system of Belief, as it 
were, face to face. Let us forget that it is errone- 
ous Religion ; let us look at it as old Thought, and 
try if we cannot sympathise with it somewhat. 
The primary characteristic of this old Northland 

30 Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible 
workings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of 
the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 23 

miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now 
lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell 
down in awe before, as Eeligion. The dark hostile 
Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as 
'Jotuns/ Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic 5 
character. Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest ; these are 
Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summer- 
heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Uni- 
verse is divided between these two; they dwell 
apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods 10 
dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen, or 
Divinities ; Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, 
is the home of the Jotuns. 

Curious all this ; and not idle or inane, if we 
will look at the foundation of it ! The power of 15 
Fire, or Flame, for instance, which we designate by 
some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from 
ourselves the essential character of wonder that 
dwells in it as in all things, is with these old North- 
men, Loke, a most swift subtle Demon, of the brood 20 
of the Jotuns. The savages of the Ladrones Islands 
too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which 
they never had seen before, was a devil or god, that 
bit you sharply when you touched it, and that lived 
upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it 25 
had not Stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame 
is a wonder. What is Flame ? — Frost the old 
Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, 
the Giant Thrym, Hrym ; or Rime, the old word 
now nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland 30 
to signify hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now 
a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil ; 



24 LECTURES ON HEROES 

the monstrous Jotun Rime drove home his Horses 
at night, sat ' combing their manes/ — which Horses 
were Hail-Clouds, or fleet Frost-Winds. His Cows 
— No, not his, but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's 
5 Cows are Icebergs : this Hymir ' looks at the rocks ' 
with his devil-eye, and they split in the glance of it. 
Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous 
or resinous ; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or 
Thor, — God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The 

10 thunder was his wrath ; the gathering of the black 
clouds is the drawing-down of Thor's angry brows ; 
the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rend- 
ing Hammer flung from the hand of Thor : he urges 
his loud chariot over the mountain-tops, — that is 

15 the peal ; wrathful he ' blows in his red beard,' — 
that is the rustling stormblast before the thunder 
begins. Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, 
the just and benignant (whom the early Christian 
Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun, 

20e^^^bfiautifulest of visible things ; wondrous too, and 
divine still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs ! 
But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell-of is one 
of whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds 
trace : the God Wunsch, or Wish. ' The God Wish ; 

25 who could give us all that we ivisJied !] Is not this 
the sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of 
man ? The rudest ideal that man ever formed ; 
which still shows itself in the latest forms of our 
spiritual culture. Higher considerations have to 

30 teach us that the God Wish is not the true God. 

^P^the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only 

for etymology's sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jotun 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 25 

Aegir, a very dangerous Jotun ; — and now to this 
day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham 
bargemen, when the Kiver is in a certain flooded 
state (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl it has, 
very dangerous to them), call it Eager ; they cry 5 
out, " Have a care, there is the Eager coming ! '' . 
Curious ; that word surviving, like the peak of a 
submerged world! The oldest Nottingham barge- 
men had believed in the God Aegir. Indeed our 
English blood too in good part is Danish, Norse 5 10 
or rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon 
have no distinction, except a superficial one, — as 
of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over 
our Island we are mingled largely with Danes 
proper, — from the incessant invasions there were : 15 
and this, of course, in a greater proportion along 
the east coast ; and greatest of all, as I find, in the 
North Country. From the Humber upwards, all 
over Scotland, the Speech of the common people is 
still in a singular degree Icelandic ; its German- 20 
ism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too 
are ' Normans/ Northmen, — if that be any great 

beauty 1^:^=:: - — — — 

Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. 
Mark at present so much ; what the essence of 25 
Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a 
recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stu- 
pendous, personal Agencies, — as Gods and Demons. 
Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought 
of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this 30 
ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the 
Norse System something very genuine, very great 



26 LECTURES ON HEROES 

and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very 
different from the light gracefulness of the old 
Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian 
System. It is Thought ; the genuine Thought of 
5 deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the 
things about them ; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart 
inspection of the things, — the first characteristic 
of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful 
lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism ; a 
10 certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a 
great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is 
strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and 
clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the 
Norse Gods ^ brewing ale ' to hold their feast with 
15 Aegir, the Sea-Jotun ; sending out Thor to get the 
caldron for them in the Jotun country ; Thor, after 
many adventures, clapping the Pot on his head, like 
a huge hat, and walking off with it, — quite lost in 
it, the ears of the Pot reaching doAvn to his heels ! 
20 A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward giant- 
hood, characterises that Norse System ; enormous 
force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless 
with large uncertain strides. Consider only their 
\ primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, hav- 
25 ing got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant made by 
I ' warm wind,' and much confused work, out of the 
! conflict of Prost and Pire, — determined on con- 
structing a world with him. His blood made the 
Sea ; his flesh was the Land, the Eocks his bones ; 
30 of his eyebrows they formed Asgard their Gods'- 
dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of 
Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. 



THE HEBO AS DIVINITY 27 

What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business ! Untamed 
Thought, great, giantlike, enormous ; — to be tamed 
in due time into the compact greatness, not giant- 
like, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the 
Shakspeares, the Goethes ! — Spiritually as well as 5 
bodily these men are our progenitors. 

I like, too, that representation they have of the 
Tree Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a 
Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its 
roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death ; lo 
its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs 
over the whole Universe ; it is the Tree of Exist- 
ence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit 
Three Nomas, Fates, — the Past, Present, Future ; 
watering its roots from the Sacred Well. Its 15 
' boughs,' with their buddings and disleafings, — 
events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, 
— stretch through all lands and times. Is not 
every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an 
act or word ? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. 20 
The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, 
onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath 
of Human Passion rustling through it ; — or storm- 
tost, the stormwind howling through it like the 
voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of 25 
Existence. It is the past, the present, and the 
future ; what was done, what is doing, what will be 
done; Hhe infinite conjugation of the verb To do.' 
Considering how human things circulate, each in- 
extricably in communion with all, — how the word 30 
I speak to you today is borrowed, not from Ulfila 
the Moesogoth only, but from all men since the first 



28 LECTURES ON HEROES 

man began to speak, — I find no similitude so true 
as this of a Tree. Beautiful ; altogether beautiful 
and great. The 'Machine of the Universe/ — alas, 
do but think of that in contrast ! 

5 Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of 
Nature ; different enough from what we believe of 
Nature. Whence it specially came, one would not 
like to be compelled to say very minutely ! One 
thing we may say : It came from the thoughts of 

10 Norse men ; — from the thought, above all, of the 
Jirst Norse man who had an original power of 
thinking. The First Norse ^ man of genius,' as we 
should call him ! Innumerable men had passed by, 
across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, 

15 such as the very animals may feel ; or with a painful, 
fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel ; 
— till the great Thinker came, the original man, the 
Seer ; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the 
slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever 

20 the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What 
he says, all men were not far from saying, were long- 
ing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from 
painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought ; answer- 
ing to it. Yes, even so ! Joyful to men as the dawning 

25 of day from night ; — is it not, indeed, the awakening 
for them from no-being into being, from death into 
life ? We still honour such a man ; call him Poet, 
Genius, and so forth : but to these wild men he was 
a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected 

30 blessing for them ; a Prophet, a God ! — Thought 
once awakened does not again slumber ; unfolds 



fSE BERO AS DIVINITY ^9 

itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man 
after man, generation after generation, — till its 
full stature is reached, and sucJi System of Thought 
can grow no farther, but must give place to another. 

For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, 5 
and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. 
A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body ; a 
Hero, of worth mmeasurable; admiration for 
whom, transcending the known bounds, became 
adoration. Has he not the power of articulate lo 
Thinking ; and many other powers, as yet miracu- 
lous ? So, with boundless gratitude, would the 
rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them 
the sphinx-enigma of this Universe ; given assur- 
ance to them of their own destiny there ? By him 15 
they know now what they have to do here, what to 
look for hereafter. Existence has become articu- 
late, melodious by him; ^ he first has made Life 
alive ! — We may call this Odin, the origin of 
Norse Mythology : Odin, or whatever name the 20 
First Norse Thinker bore while he was a man 
among men. His view of the Universe once pro- 
mulgated, a like view starts into being in all 
minds ; grows, keeps ever growing, while it con- 
tinues credible there. In all minds it lay written, 25 
but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink ; at his word it 
starts into visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch 
of the world, the great event, parent of all others, 
is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world ! — 

One other thing we must not forget ; it will ex- 30 
plain, a little, the confusion of these Norse Eddas. 
They are not one coherent System of Thought ; but 



30 LECTURES ON HEROES 

properly the summation of several successive sys- 
tems. All this of the old Norse Belief which is 
flung-out for us, in one level of distance in the 
Edda, like a picture painted on the same canvas, 
5 does not at all stand so in the reality. It stands 
rather at all manner of distances and depths, of 
successive generations since the Belief first be- 
gan. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first of 
them, contributed to that Scandinavian System 

10 of Thought ; in ever-new elaboration and addition, 
it is the combined work of them all. What his- 
tory it had, how it changed from shape to shape, 
by one thinker's contribution after another, till it 
got to the full final shape we see it under in the 

15 Edda, no man will now ever know : its Councils of 
Trebisond, Councils of Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, 
Luthers, are sunk without echo in the dark night ! 
Only that it had such a history we can all know. 
Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing 

20 he thought-of was a contribution, accession, a 
change or revolution made. Alas, the grandest 
^revolution' of all, the one made by the man Odin 
himself, is not this too sunk for us like the rest ! 
Of Odin what history ? Strange rather to reflect 

25 that he had a history ! That this Odin, in his wild 
Norse vesture, with his wild beard and eyes, his 
rude Norse speech and ways, was a man like us ; 
with our sorrows, joys, with our limbs, features; — 
intrinsically all one as we : and did such a work ! 

30 But the work, much of it, has perished; the 
worker, all to the name. " TFecZ?iesday," men will 
say tomorrow ; Odin's day ! Of Odin there exists 



THE HEBO AS DIVINITY 31 

no history ; no document of it ; no guess about it 
worth repeating. 

Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in 
a brief business style, writes down in his Heims- 
Jcringla, how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the Black- 5 
Sea region, with Twelve Peers, and a great people 
straitened for room. How he led these Asen (Asi- 
atics) of his out of Asia ; settled them in the North 
parts of Europe, by warlike conquest ; invented 
Letters, Poetry and so forth, — and came by and lO 
by to be worshipped as Chief God by these Scan- 
dinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Twelve Sons 
of his own, Gods like himself: Snorro has no 
doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus, a very curious 
Northman of that same century, is still more un- 15 
hesitating 5 scruples not to find out a historical 
fact in every individual mythus, and writes it down 
as a terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere. 
Torfseus, learned and cautious, some centuries 
later, assigns by calculation a date for it : Odin, he 20 
says, came into Europe about the Year 70 before 
Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere uncer- 
tainties, found to be untenable now, I need say 
nothing. Far, very far beyond the Year 70 ! 
Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, 25 
figure and environment are sunk from us forever 
into unknown thousands of years. 

Nay Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far 
as to deny that any man Odin ever existed. He 
proves it by etymology. The word Wuotan, which 30 
is the original form of Odi7i, a word spread, as 
name of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic 



32 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Nations everywhere ; this word, which connects 
itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin vadere, 
with the English wade and suchlike, — means pri- 
marily Movement, Source of Movement, Power ; and 
5 is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man. 
The word signifies Divinity, he says, among the 
old Saxon, German and all Teutonic Nations ; the 
adjectives formed from it all signify divine, supreme, 
or something pertaining to the chief god. Like 

10 enough ! We must bow to Grimm in matters 
etymological. Let us consider it fixed that Wuotan 
means Wading, force of Movement. And now still, 
what hinders it from being the name of a Heroic 
Man and Mover, as well as of a god ? As for the 

15 adjectives, and words formed from it, — did not 
the Spaniards in their universal admiration for 
Lope, get into the habit of saying ' a Lope flower,' 
'b, Lope dama/ if the flower or woman were of 
surpassing beauty ? Had this lasted. Lope would 

20 have grown, in Spain, to be an adjective signifying 
godlike also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his Essay on 
Language, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever 
were formed precisely in that way : some very 
green thing, chiefly notable for its greenness, got the 

25 appellative name Green, and then the next thing 
remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, 
was named the green tree, — as we still say ' the 
steam coach,' 'four-horse coach,' or the like. All 
primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed 

30 in this way ; were at first substantives and things. 
We cannot annihilate a man for etymologies like 
that ! Surely there was a First Teacher and Cap- 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 33 

tain ; siirely there must have been an Odin, palpable 
to the sense at one time ; no adjective, but a real 
Hero of flesh and blood ! The voice of all tradi- 
tion, history or echo of history, agrees with all that 
thought will teach one about it, to assure us of 5 
this. 

How the man Odin came to be considered a god} 
the chief god ? — that surely is a question which f2^^^-t^ 
nobody would wish to dogmatise upon. I have ffix^uo^ 
said, his people knew no limits to their admiration lO 
of him ; they had as yet no scale to measure admi- 
ration by. Fancy your own generous heart' s-love 
of some greatest man expanding till it transcended 
all bounds, till it filled and overflowed the whole 
field of your thought ! Or what if this man Odin, 15 
— since a great deep soul, with the afflatus and mys- 
terious tide of vision and impulse rushing on him 
he knows not whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of 
terror and wonder to himself, — should have felt 
that perhaps he was divine ; that he was some efflu- 20 
ence of the ' Wuotan,' ' Movement, Supreme Power 
and Divinity, of whom to his rapt vision all Nature 
was the awful Flame-image ; that some efiluence of 
Wuotan dwelt here in him ! He was not necessa- 
rily false ; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest 25 
he knew. A great soul, any sincere soul, knows 
not ivhat he is, — alternates between the highest 
height and the lowest depth ; can, of all things, the 
least measure — Himself ! What others take him 
for, and what he guesses that he may be ; these two 30 
items strangely act on one another, help to deter- 
mine one another. With all men reverently admir-. 



34 LECTURES ON HEROES 

ing him ; with his own wild soul full of noble ar- 
dours and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness 
and glorious new light ; a divine Universe bursting 
all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to 

5 whom the like ever had befallen, what could he 
think himself to be ? " Wuotan ? " All men an- 
swered, " Wuotan ! " — 

And then consider what mere Time will do in 
such cases ; how if a man was great while living, he 

10 becomes tenfold greater when dead. What an enor- 
m&as^cam£ra-obsc ura magni fier is- Tradition ! How 
a thing grows in the human Memory, in the human 
Imagination, when love, worship and all that lies in 
the human Heart, is there to encourage it. And in 

15 the darkness, in the entire ignorance ; without date 
or document, no book, no Arundel-marble ; only here 
and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why, in 
thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great 
man would grow mythic, the contemporaries who 

20 had seen him, being once all dead. And in three- 
hundred years, and in three-thousand years — ! — 
To attempt theorising on such matters would profit 
little : they are matters which refuse to be theoremed 
and diagramed ; which Logic ought to know that 

25 she cannot speak of. Enough for us to discern, far 
in the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small 
real light shining in the centre of that enormous 
camera-obscura image ; to discern that the centre of 
it all was not a madness and nothing, but a sanity 

30 and something. 

This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the 
Norse mind, dark but living, waiting only for light ; 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 35 

this is to me the centre of the whole. How such 
light will then shine out, and with wondrous thou- 
sandfold expansion spread itself, in forms and 
colours, depends not on it, so much as on the Na- 
tional Mind recipient of it. The colours and forms 5 
of your light will be those of the cut-glass it has to 
shine through. — Curious to think how, for every 
man, any, the truest fact is modelled by the nature 
of the man ! I said. The earnest man, speak- 
ing to his brother men, must always have stated lo 
what seemed to him a fact, a real Appearance of 
Nature. But the way in which such Appearance or 
fact shaped itself, — what sort of fact it became for 
him, — was and is modified by his own laws of 
thinking ; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating 15 
laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the 
Phantasy of Himself ; this world is the multiplex 
^ Image of his own Dream.' Who knows to what un- 
nameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan 
Fables owe their shape ! The number Twelve, divisi- 20 
blest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted 
into three, into six, the most remarkable number, — 
this was enough to determine the Signs of the Zodiac, 
the number of Odin's Sons, and innumerable other 
Twelves. Any vague rumour of number had a ten- 25 
dency to settle itself into Twelve. So with regard 
to every other matter. And quite unconsciously 
too, — with no notion of building-up ^ Allegories ' ! 
But the fresh clear glance of those First Ages would 
be prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, 30 
and wholly open to obey these, .-^chiller finds in 
the Cestus of Venus an everlasting "^'sesthetic truth as 



36 LECTURES ON HEROES 

to the nature of all Beauty ; curious : — but he is 
careful not to insinuate that the old Greek Mythists 
had any notion of lecturing about the ' Philosophy 
of Criticism ' ! On the whole, we must leave 

5 those boundless regions. Cannot we conceive that 
Odin was a reality ? Error indeed, error enough : 
but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory afore- 
thought, — we will not believe that our Fathers 
believed in these. 

10 Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. 
Runes, and the miracles of ' magic ' he worked by 
them, make a great feature in tradition. E-unes are 
the Scandinavian Alphabet ; suppose Odin to have 
been the inventor of Letters, as well as 'magic,' 

15 among that people ! It is the greatest invention 
man has ever made, this of marking-dowij the un- 
seen thought that is in him by written characters. 
It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous 
as the first. You remember the astonishment and 

20 incredulity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King ; how 
he made the Spanish Soldier who was guarding him 
scratch Dios on his thumb-nail, that he might try 
the next soldier with it, to ascertain whether such 
a miracle was possible. If Odin brought Letters 

25 among his people, he might work magic enough ! 

Writing by Runes has some air of being original 

among the jSTorsemen : not a Phoenician Alphabet, 

but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us 

farther that Odin invented Poetry ; the music of 

30 human speech, ;as well as that miraculous runic 
marking of it. 'Transport yourselves into the early 
childhood of nations; the first beautiful morningr 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 37 

light of our Europe, when all yet lay in fresh young 
radiance as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was 
first beginning to think, to be ! Wonder, hope ; in- 
finite radiance of hope and wonder, as of a young 
child's thoughts, in the hearts of these, strong men ! 5 
Strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a 
wild Captain and Fighter ; discerning with his wild 
flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart 
daring and doing it; but a Poet too, all that we 
mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker lo 
and Inventor, — as the truly Great Man ever is. 
A Hero is a Hero at all points ; in the soul and 
thought of him first of all. This Odin, in his 
rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A 
great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, 15 
and man's Life here, and utter a great word about 
it. A Hero, as I say, in his own rude manner ; a 
wise, gifted, noble-hearted man. And now, if we 
still admire such a man beyond all others, what 
must these wild Norse souls, first awakened into 20 
thinking, have made of him ! To them, as yet with- 
out names for it, he was noble and noblest ; Hero, 
Prophet, God ; Wuotan, the greatest of all. Thought 
is Thought, however it speak or spell itself. Intrin- 
sically, I conjecture, this Odin must have been of 25 
the same sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. 
A great thought in the wild deep heart of him ! The 
rough words he articulated, are they not the rudi- 
mental roots of those English words we still use ? 
He worked so, in that obscure element. But he 30 
was as a light kindled in it; a light of Intellect, 
rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights we 



38 LECTURES ON HEROES 

have yet ; a Hero, as I say : and lie had to shine 
there, and make his obscure element a little lighter, 

— as is still the task of us all. 

We will fancy him to be the Type Norseman ; the 
5 finest Teuton whom that race had yet produced. 
The rude Norse heart burst-up into boundless ad- 
miration round him; into adoration. He is as a 
root of so many great things; the fruit of him 
is found growing, from deep thousands of years, 

10 over the whole field of Teutonic Life. Our own 
Wednesday, as I said, is it not still Odin's Day? 
Wednesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wands- 
worth : Odin grew into England too, these are still 
leaves from that root ! He was the Chief God to 

15 all the Teutonic Peoples ; their Pattern Norseman ; 

— in such way did they admire their Pattern Norse- 
man ; that was the fortune he had in the world. 

Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished 
utterly, there is this huge Shadow of him which 

20 still projects itself over the whole History of his 
People. For this Odin once admitted to be God, we 
can understand well that the whole Scandinavian 
Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it 
might before have been, would now begin to develop 

25 itself altogether differently, and grow thenceforth 
in a new manner. What this Odin saw into, and 
taught with his runes and his rhymes, the whole 
Teutonic People laid to heart and carried forward. 
His way of thought became their way of thought : 

30 — such, under new conditions, is the history of 
every great thinker still. In gigantic confused 
lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscura 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 39 

shadow thrown upwards from the dead deeps of 
the Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, 
is not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort 
the Portraiture of this man Odin ? The gigantic 
image of Ms natural face, legible or not legible 5 
there, expanded and confused in that manner ! 
Ah, Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great 
man lives in vain. The History of the world is 
but the Biography of great men. ) 

To me there is something very touching in this 10 
primeval figure of Heroism; in such artless, help- 
less, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his 
fellow-men. Never so helpless in shape, it is the 
noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or 
other perennial as man himself. If I could show 15 
in any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time 
now. That it is the vital element of manhood, the 
soul of man's history here in our world, — it would 
be the chief use of this discoursing at present. We 
do not now call our great men Gods, nor admire 20 
without limit ; ah no, with limit enough ! But if we 
have no great men, or do not admire at all, — that 
were a still worse case. 

This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole 
[Norse way of looking at the Universe, and adjust- 25 
^ng oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us. 
A rude childlike way of recognising the divineness 
of Nature, the divineness of Man ; most rude, yet 
heartfelt, robust, giantlike ; betokening what a giant 
of a man this child would yet grow to ! — It was 30 
a truth, and is none. Is it not as the half-dumb 
stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our 



40 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

own Fathers, calling out of the. depths of ages to 
us, in whose veins their blood still runs : " This 
then, this is what we made of the world : this is all 
the image and notion we could form to ourselves of 
5 this great mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise 
it not. ( You are raised high above it, to large free 
scope of vision ; but you too are not yet at the top. 

, No, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a par- 
V tial, imperfect one ; that matter is a thing no man 

10 will ever, in time or out of time, comprehend ; after 
thousands of years of ever-new expansion, man will 
find himself but struggling to comprehend again a 
part of it : the thing is larger than man, not to be 
comprehended by him ; an Infinite thing ! " j 

15 The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all 
Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of 
the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of 
man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly 
seen at work in the world round him. This, I 

20 should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandina- 
vian than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is 
the great characteristic of it. Superior sincerity 
(far superior) consoles us for the total want of old 
Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than 

25 grace. I feel that these old Northmen were looking 
into Nature with open eye and soul : most earnest, 
honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great- 
hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a 
true, loving, admiring, unf earing way. A right 

30 valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition of 
Nature one finds to be the chief element of Pagan- 



TBt: HERO AS DIVINITY 41 

ism : recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, 
though this too is not wanting, comes to be the 
chief element only in purer forms of religion. 
Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in 
Human Beliefs ; a great landmark in the religious 5 
development of Mankind. Man first puts himself 
in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders 
and worships over those ; not till a later epoch does 
he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand 
point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, 10 
of Thou shalt and Thou shalt not. 

With regard to all these fabulous delineations in 
the Edda, I will remark, moreover, as indeed was 
already hinted, that most probably they must have 
been of much newer date ; most probably, even 15 
from the first, were comparatively idle for the old 
Norsemen, and as it were a kind of Poetic sport. 
/Allegory and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, 
cannot be religious Faith; the Paith itself must 
first be there, then Allegory enough will gather 20 
round it, as the fit body round its soul. ') The ISTorse 
Paith, I can well suppose, like other Faiths, was 
most active while it lay mainly in the silent state, 
and had not yet much to say about itself, still less 
to sing. 25 

Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all 
that fantastic congeries of assertions, and tradi- 
tions, in their musical "Mythologies, the main prac- 
tical belief a man could have was probably not 
much more than this : of the Vcdkyrs and the Hall 30 
of Odin ; of an inflexible Destiny ; and that the 
one thing needful for a man was to he brave. The 



42 LECTURES ON HEROES . 

Valkyrs are Choosers of the Slain ; a Destiny inex- 
orable^ which it is useless trying to bend or soften, 
has appointed who is to be slain ; this was a funda- 
mental point for the Norse believer ; — as indeed it 
5 is for all earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, 
a Luther, for a IST apoleon too. It lies at the basis 
this for every such man; it is the woof out of 
which his whole system of thought is woven. The 
Valkyrs ; and then that these Choosers lead the 

10 brave to a heavenly Hall of Odin ; only the base 
and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the realms 
of Hela the Death-goddess : I take this to have 
been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They 
understood in their heart that it was indispensable 

15 to be brave ; that Odin would have no favour for 
them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were 
not brave. Consider too whether there is not some- 
thing in this ! It is an everlasting duty, valid in 
our day as in that, the duty of being brave. ( Valour 

20 is still value. The first duty for a man is still that 
of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear ; we 
cannot act at all till then. ) A man's acts are slavish, 
not true but specious ; his very thoughts are false, 
he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have 

25 got Fear under his feet. Odin's creed, if we dis- 
entangle the real kernel of it, is true to this hour. 
A man shall and must be valiant ; he must march 
forward, and quit himself like a man, — trusting 
imperturbably in the appointment and cJioice of the 

30 upper Powers ; and, on the whole, not fear at all. 
Now and always, the completeness of his victory 
over Fear will determine how much of a man he is. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 43 

It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of 
the old Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it 
a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if 
natural death seemed to be coming on, they would 
cut wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive 5 
them as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die, 
had their body laid into a ship ; the ship sent forth, 
with sails set and slow fire burning it ; that, once 
out at sea, it might blaze-up in flame, and in such 
manner bury worthily the old hero, at once in the 10 
sky and in the ocean ! Wild bloody valour ; yet 
valour of its kind; better, I say, than none. In 
the old Sea-kings too, what an indomitable rugged 
energy ! Silent, with closed lips, as I fancy them, 
unconscious that they were specially brave ; defy- 15 
ing the wild ocean with its monsters, and all men 
and things; — progenitors of our own Blakes and 
Nelsons ! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings ; 
but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of 
small fruit in the world, to some of them; — to 20 
Hrolf 's of Normandy, for instance ! Hrolf, or 
E-ollo Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has 
a share in governing England at this hour. 

Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild 
sea-roving and battling, through so many genera- 25 
tions. It needed to be ascertained which was the 
strongest kind of men ; who were to be ruler over 
whom. Among the Northland Sovereigns, too, I 
find some who got the title Wood-cutter ; Forest- 
felling Kings. Much lies in that. I suppose at 30 
bottom many of them were forest-fellers as well 
as fighters, though the Skalds talk mainly of the 



44 LECTURES ON HEROES 

latter, — misleading certain critics not a little ; for 
no nation of men could ever live by fighting alone; 
there could not produce enough, come out of that ! 
I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest also 
5 the right good forest-feller, — the right good im- 
prover, discerner, doer and worker in every kind; 
for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is the 
basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valour that ; 
showing itself against the untamed Forests and 

10 dark brute Powers of oSTature, to conquer ISTature 
for us. In the same direction have not we their 
descendants since carried it far ? May such valour 
last forever with us ! 

That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice 

15 and heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, 
told his People the infinite importance of Yalour, 
how man thereby became a god; and that his 
People, feeling a response to it in their own hearts, 
believed this message of his, and thought it a mes- 

20 sage out of Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling 
it them : this seems to me the primary seed-grain 
of the Norse Religion, from which all manner of 
mythologies, symbolic practices, speculations, alle- 
gories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. 

25 Grow, — how strangely ! I called it a small light 
shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse 
darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive ; con- 
sider that. It Avas the eager inarticulate unin- 
structed Mind of the whole Norse People, longing 

30 only to become articulate, to go on articulating ever 
farther ! The living doctrine grows, grows ; — like 
a Banyan-tree ; the first seed is the essential thing : 



THE HERO A3 DIVINITY 45 

any branch strikes itself down into the earth, be- 
comes a new root; and so, in endless complexity, 
we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one seed the 
parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse Eeligion, 
accordingly, in some sense, what we called ^the 5 
enormous shadow of this man's likeness ' ? Critics •<- 
trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of the 
Creation and suchlike, with those of the Hindoos.) 
The Cow Adumbla, ^ licking the rime from the rocks,'^ 
has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, trans- 10 
ported into frosty countries. Probably enough ; in- 
deed we may say undoubtedly, these things will 
have a kindred with the remotest lands, with the 
earliest times. ?Jhought does not die, but only is 
changed. ) The first man that began to think in this 15 
Planet of ours, he was the beginner of all. And then 
the second man, and the third man; — nay, every 
true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches 
men Ms way of thought, spreads a shadow of his 
own likeness over sections of the History of the 20 
World. 

Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of 
this Norse Mythology I have not room to speak; 
nor does it concern us much. Some wild Prophe- 
cies we have, as the Voluspa in the Elder Edda ; 25 
of a rapt, earnest, sibyUine sort. But they were 
comparatively an idle adjunct of the matter, men 
who as it were but toyed with the matter, these 
later Skalds ; and it is their songs chiefly that sur- 
vive. In later centuries, I suppose, they would go 30 
on singing, poetically symbolising, as our modern 



46 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Painters paint, when it was no longer from the in- 
nermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This 
is everywhere to be well kept in mind. 

Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, 
5 will give one no notion of it ; — any more than Pope 
will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace 
of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, 
as Gray gives it us : no ; rough as the North rocks, 
as the Iceland deserts, it is ; with a heartiness, 

10 homeliness, even a tint of good humour and robust 
mirth in the middle of these fearful things. The 
strong old Norse heart did not go upon theatrical 
sublimities ; they had not time to tremble. I like 
much their robust simplicity; their veracity, di- 

15 rectness of conception. Thor 'draws down his 
brows ' in a veritable Norse rage ; ' grasps his ham- 
mer till the knuckles grow white.'' Beautiful traits 
of pity too, an honest pity. Balder 'the white 
God ' dies ; the beautiful, benignant ; he is the 

20 Sungod. They try all Nature for a remedy; but 
he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends Hermoder 
to seek or see him : nine days and nine nights he 
rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of 
gloom; arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof: 

25 the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pass here; but 
the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far 
towards the North." Hermoder rides on ; leaps 
Hell-gate, Hela's gate ; does see Balder, and speak 
with him : Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable ! 

30 Hela will not, for Odin or any God, give him up. 
The beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His 
Wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with 



THE HEBO AS DIVINITY 47 

him. They shall forever remain there. He sends 
his ring to Odin ; Nanna his wife sends her thimble 
to Frigga, as a remembrance — Ah me ! — 

For indeed Valour is the fountain of Pity too; 
— of Truth, and all that is great and good in man. 5 
The robust homely vigour of the Norse heart at- 
taches one much, in these delineations. Is it not a 
trait of right honest strength, says Uhland, who 
has written a fine Essay on Thor, that the old Norse 
heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god? That 10 
it is not frightened away by his thunder ; but finds 
that Summer-heat, the beautiful noble summer, 
must and will have thunder withal ! The Norse 
heart loves this Thor and his hammer-bolt ; sports 
with him. Thor is Summer-heat; the god of 15 
Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is 
the Peasant's friend; his true henchman and at- 
tendant is Thialfi, Manual Labour. Thor himself 
engages in all manner of rough manual work, scorns 
no business for its plebeianism; is ever and anon 20 
travelling to the country of the Jotuns, harrying 
those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at 
least straitening and damaging them. There is a 
great broad humour in some of these things. 

Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to 25 
seek Hymir's Caldron, that the Gods may brew 
beer. Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard 
all full of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very 
glance of his eye ; Thor, after much rough tumult, 
snatches the Pot, claps it on his head ; the ' handles 30 
of it reach down to his heels.' The Norse Skald 
has a kind of loving sport with Thor. This is the 



48 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

Hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, 
are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brobdignag genius, 
— needing only to be tamed-down; into Shak- 
speares, Dantes, Goethes! It is all gone now, that 
5 old Norse work, — Thor the Thunder-god changed 
into Jack the Giant-killer : but the mind that made 
it is here yet. How strangely things grow, and 
die, and do not die ! There are twigs of that great 
world-tree of Norse Belief still curiously traceable. 

10 This poor Jack of the Nursery, with his miraculous 
shoes of swiftness, coat of darkness, sword of sharp- 
ness, he is one. Hynde Etin, and still more deci- 
sively Red Etin of Ireland, in the Scottish Ballads 
these are both derived from Norseland; Etin is 

15 evidently a Jotim. Nay, Shakspeare's Hamlet is 
a twig too of this same world-tree ; there seems no 
doubt of that. Hamlet, AmletJi, 1 find, is really 
a mythic personage; and his Tragedy, of the poi- 
soned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, 

20 and the rest, is a Norse mythus ! Old Saxo, as his 
wont was, made it a Danish history; Shakspeare, 
out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig 
of the world-tree that has grown, I think; — by 
nature or accident that one has grown ! 

25 In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in 
them, an inward perennial truth and greatness, — 
as, indeed, all must have that can very long pre- 
serve itself by tradition alone. It is a greatness 
not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude 

30 greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplain- 
ing melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A 
great free glance into the very deeps of thought. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 49 

They seem to hare seen, these brave old Northmen, 
what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, 
That this world is after all but a show, — a phe- 
nomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep 
souls see into that, — the Hindoo Mythologist, the 5 
German Philosopher, — the Shakspeare, the earnest 
Thinker, wherever he may be : 

' We are. such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' 

One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the Outer 
Garden, central seat of Jotun-land), is remarkable lo 
in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and Loke. 
After various adventures, they entered upon Giant- 
land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated 
places, among stones and trees. At nightfall they 
noticed a house; and as the door, which indeed 15 
formed one whole side of the house, was open, they 
entered. It was a simple habitation; one large 
hall, altogether empty. They stayed there. Sud- 
denly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed 
them. Thor grasped his hammer; stood in the 20 
door, prepared for fight. His companions within 
ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some 
outlet in that rude hall ; they found a little closet 
at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor 
any battle : for, lo, in the morning it turned-out 25 
that the noise had been only the snoring of a cer- 
tain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skry- 
mir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by ; and this 
that they took for a house was merely his Glove, 
thrown aside there ; the door was the Glove-wrist ; 30 
the little closet they had fled into was the Thumb ! 



50 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Such a glove ; — I remark too tliat it had not fingers 
as ours have, but only a thumb, and the rest un- 
divided : a most ancient, rustic glove ! 

Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day ; 
5 Thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like 
the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put 
an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, 
he struck down into the Giant's face a right thun- 
derbolt blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant 

10 merely awoke ; rubbed his cheek, and said. Did a 
leaf fall ? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir 
again slept; a better blow than before; but the 
Giant only murmured. Was that a grain of sand ? 
Thor's third stroke was with both his hands (the 

15 'knuckles white' I suppose), and seemed to dint 
deep into Skrymir' s visage ; but he merely checked 
his snore, and remarked. There must be sparrows 
roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they 
have dropt ? — At the gate of Utgard, a place so 

20 high that you had to 'strain your neck bending 
back to see the top of it,' Skrymir went his ways. 
Thor and his companions were admitted ; invited 
to take share in the games going on. To Thor, for 
his part, they handed a Drinking-horn; it was a 

25 common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at 
one draught. Long and fiercely, three times over, 
Thor drank ; but made hardly any impression. He 
was a weak child, they told him : could he lift that 
Cat he saw there ? Small as the feat seemed, Thor 

30 with his whole godlike strength could not; he 
bent-up the creature's back, could not raise its feet 
off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 51 

Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people; 
there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you! 
Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old 
Woman; but could not throw her. 

And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief 5 
Jotun, escorting them politely a little way, said 
to Thor : " You are beaten then : — yet be not so 
much ashamed ; there was deception of appearance 
in it. That Horn you tried to drink was the Sea ; 
you did make it ebb ; but who could drink that, the 10 
bottomless ! The Cat you would have lifted, — 
why, that is the Midgard-snake, the Great World- 
serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps-up 
the whole created world; had you torn that up, 
the world must have rushed to ruin ! As for the 15 
Old Woman, she was Time, Old Age, Duration: 
with her what can wrestle ? No man nor no god 
with her ; gods or men, she prevails over all ! And 
then those three strokes you struck, — look at these 
three valleys ; your three strokes made these ! " 20 
Thor looked at his attendant Jotun : it was Skry- 
mir; — it was, say Norse critics, the old chaotic 
rocky Earth in person, and that glove-/ioz«se was 
some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; 
Utgard with its skyhigh gates, when Thor grasped 25 
his hammer to smite them, had gone to air; only 
the Giant's voice was heard mocking : " Better come 
no more to Jotunheim ! " — 

This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and 
half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout : 30 
but as a mythus is there not real antique Norse 
gold in it ? More true metal, rough from the Mimer- 



52 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

smithy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus shaped 
far better ! A great broad Brobdignag grin of true 
humour is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on ear- 
nestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tem- 

5 pest : only a right valiant heart is capable of that. 
It is the grim humour of our own Ben Jonson, rare 
old Ben ; runs in the blood of us, I fancy ; for one 
catches tones of it, under a still other shape, out of 
the American Backwoods. 

10 That is also a very striking conception that of 
the Ragnarok, Consummation, or Twilight of the 
Gods. It is in the Voluspa Song ; seemingly a very 
old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the 
divine Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after 

15 long contest and partial victory by the former, 
meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle 
and duel; World-serpent against Thor, strength 
against strength; mutually extinctive; and ruin, 
' twilight ' sinking into darkness, swallows the 

20 created Universe. The old Universe with its Gods 
is sunk ; but it is not final death : there is to be a 
new Heaven and a new Earth ; a higher supreme 
God, and Justice to reign among men. Curious ! 
this law of mutation, which also is a law written in 

25 man's inmost thought, had been deciphered by these 
old earnest Thinkers in their rude style ; and how, 
though all dies, and even gods die, yet all death 
is but a phoenix fire-death, and new-birth into the 
Greater and the Better ! It is the fundamental 

30 Law of Being for a creature made of Time, living 
in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen 
into it 5 may still see into it. 



THE HERO AS DIVINITY 53 

And now, connected with, tliis, let us glance at 
the last mythus of the appearance of Thor; and 
end there. I fancy it to be the latest in date of all 
these fables; a sorrowing protest against the ad- 
vance of Christianity, — set forth reproachfully by 5 
some Conservative Pagan. King Olaf has been 
harshly blamed for his over-zeal in introducing 
Christianity ; surely I should have blamed him far 
more for an under-zeal in that ! He paid dear 
enough for it ; he died by the revolt of his Pagan 10 
people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stickelstad, 
near that Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral of 
the North has now stood for many centuries, dedi- 
cated gratefully to his memory as Saint Olaf. The 
mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, 15 
the Christian Eeform King, is sailing with fit escort 
along the shore of Norway, from haven to haven ; 
dispensing justice, or doing other royal work : on 
leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, 
of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust 20 
figure, has stept in. The courtiers address him; 
his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth : 
at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's 
conversation here is not less remarkable, as they 
sail along the beautiful shore ; but after some time, 25 
he addresses King Olaf thus : " Yes, King Olaf, it 
is all beautiful, with the sun shining on it there ; 
green, fruitful, a right fair home for you ; and 
many a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with 
the rock Jotuns, before he could make it so. And 30 
now you seem minded to put away Thor. King 
Olaf, have a care ! " said the stranger, drawing-down 



54 LECTURES ON HEROES 

his brows ; — and when they looked again, he was 
nowhere to be found. — This is the last appearance 
of Thor on the stage of this world ! 

Do we not see well enough how the Fable might 
5 arise, without unveracity on the part of any one ? 
It is the way most Gods have come to appear among 
men : thus, if in Pindar's time ' Neptune was seen 
once at the Nemean Games,' what was this Neptune 
too but a ' stranger of noble grave aspect,' — Jit to 

10 be ' seen ' ! There is something pathetic, tragic for 
me in this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, 
the whole Norse world has vanished ; and will not 
return ever again. In like fashion to that pass 
away the highest things. All things that have been 

15 in this world, all things that are or will be in it, 
have to vanish : we have our sad farewell to give 
them. 

That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly 
impressive Consecration of Valour (so we may de- 

20 line it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen. 
Consecration of Valour is not a bad thing ! We 
will take it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is 
there no use in knowing something about this old 
Paganism of our Fathers. Unconsciously, and com- 

25 bined with higher things, it is in us yet, that old 
Faith withal ! To know it consciously, brings us 
into closer and clearer relation with the Past, — 
with our own possessions in the Past. For the 
whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession 

30 of the Present ; the Past had always something t7'ue, 
and is a precious possession. In a different time, 
in a different place, it is always some other side of 



THE HEBO AS DIVINITY bb 

our common Human Nature that has been develop- 
ing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these ; 
not any one of them by itself constitutes what of 
Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to 
know them all than misknow them. "To which 5 
of these Three Eeligions do you specially adhere ? ^' 
inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the 
Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three; 
for they by their union first constitute the True 
E-eligion." 10 



LECTUEE II 

THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM 

[Friday, 8th May 1840] 

From the first rude times of Paganism among 
tlie Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a 
very different epoch of religion, among a very 
different people : Mahometanism among the Arabs. 

5 A great change ; what a change and progress is 
indicated here, in the universal condition and 
thoughts of men ! 

The Hero is not now regarded as a God among 
his fellow-men; but as one God-inspired, as a 

10 Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship : 
the first or oldest, we may say, has passed away 
without return; in the history of the world there 
will not again be any man, never so great, whom 
his fellow-men will take for a god. Nay we might 

15 rationally ask. Did any set of human beings ever 
really think the man they saiv there standing beside 
them a god, the maker of this world? Perhaps 
not : it was usually some man they remembered, or 
had seen. But neither can this any more be. The 

20 Great Man is not recognised henceforth as a god 
any more. 

56 



THE BEEO AS PBOPBET 57 

It was a rude gross error, that of counting the 
Great Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all 
times diflB.cult to know what he is, or how to account 
of him and receive him ! The most significant feat- 
ure in the history of an epoch is the manner it has of 5 
welcoming a Great Man. Ever, to the true instincts 
of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether 
they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, 
or what they shall take him to be ? that is ever a 
grand question ; by their way of answering that, we 10 
shall see, as through a little window, into the very 
heart of these men's spiritual condition. For at 
bottom the Great Man, as he comes from the hand 
of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, 
Luther, Johnson, Burns ; I hope to make it appear 15 
that these are all originally of one stuff ; that only 
by the world's reception of them, and the shapes 
they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. 
The worship of Odin astonishes us, — to fall pros- 
trate before the Great Man, into deliquium of love 20 
and wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that 
he was a denizen of the skies, a god! This was 
imperfect enough : but to welcome, for example, a 
Burns as we did, was that what we can call perfect ? 
The most precious gift that Heaven can give to the 25 
Earth; a man of ^genius' as we call it; the Soul of 
a Man actually sent down from the skies with a 
Grod's-message to us, — this we waste away as an 
idle artifi.cial firework, sent to amuse us a little, and 
sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality : such 30 
reception of a Great Man I do not call very perfect 
either ! Looking into the heart of the thing, one 



58 LECTURES ON HEROES 

may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier 
phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections 
in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method 
itself ! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium 
5 of love and admiration, was not good; but such 
unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at 
all is perhaps still worse! — It is a thing forever 
changing, this of Hero-worship : different in each 
age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the 

10 heart of the whole business of the age, one may 
say, is to do it well. 

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent 
Prophet ; but as the one we are freest to speak of. 
He is by no means the truest of Prophets ; but I do 

15 esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no dan- 
ger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean 
to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the 
way to get at his secret: let us try to understand 
what he meant with the world; what the world 

20 meant and means with him, will then be a more an- 
swerable question. Our current hypothesis about 
Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a 
Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass 
of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now un- 

25 tenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning 
zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to 
ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, 
Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, 
trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass 

30 for an angel dictating to him ? Grotius answered 
that there was no proof! It is really time to dis- 
miss all that. The word this man spoke has been 



THE HEBO AS PBOPHET 59 

the life-guidance now of a hundred-and-eighty 
millions of men these twelve-hundred years. These 
hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God as 
well as we. A greater number of God's creatures 
believe in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any 5 
other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it 
was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this 
which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived 
by and died by ? I, for my part, cannot form any 
such supposition. I will believe most things sooner 10 
than that. One would be entirely at a loss what to 
think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and 
were sanctioned here. 

Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we 
would attain to knowledge of anything in God's 15 
true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly ! They 
are the product of an Age of Scepticism ; they in- 
dicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere 
death-life of the souls of men : more godless theory, 
I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A 20 
false man found a religion? Why, a false man 
cannot build a brick house ! If he do not know 
and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt 
clay and what else he works in, it is no house that 
he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand 25 
for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred-and-eighty 
millions ; it will fall straightway. A man must 
conform himself to Nature's laws, be verily in com- 
munion with Kature and the truth of things, or 
ISTature will answer him, No, not at all ! Speciosi- 30 
ties are specious — ah me ! — a Cagliostro, many 
Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by 



60 LECTUBJB8 OIT HEEOES 

their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged bank- 
note; they get it passed out of their worthless 
hands: others, not they, have to smarl: for it. 
ITature bur^ts-up in %e-flames, Prench Eevolutions 
5 and suchlike, procl§.>;ning with terrible veracity 
that forged notes are forged. 

But of a Great Man especially, of him I will 
venture to assert that it is incredible he should 
have been other than true. ' It seems to me the 

10 primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie 
in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Crom- 
well, no man adequate to do anything, but is first 
of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sin- 
cere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, 

15 genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all 
men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that 
calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor 
matter indeed ; — a shallow braggart conscious sin- 
cerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great 

20 Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, 
is not conscious of : nay, I suppose, he is conscious 
rather of ^sincerity; for what man can walk ac- 
curately by the law of truth for one day ? No, 
the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far 

25 from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is 
so : I would say rather, his sincerity does not de- 
pend on himself ; he cannot help being sincere ! 
The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly 
as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence 

30 of this Reality. His mind is so made ; he is great 
by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real 
as Life,^ real as Death, is this Universe to him. 



THE HERO AS PHOPHET 6l 

Though all men should forget its truth, and walk 
in a vain show, he cannot. At aP moments the 
Flame-image glares-in upon him ; un deniable, there, 
there ! — I wish you to take this as my primary 
definition of a Great Man. A little man may have 5 
this, it is competent to all men that God has made : 
but a Great Man cannot be without it. 

Such a man is what we call an original man; he 
comes to us at first-hand. A messenger he, sent 
from the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. We lo 
may call him Poet, Prophet, God;— in one wa}^ or 
other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no 
other man's words. Direct from the Inner Fact of 
things; — he lives, and has to live, in daily com- 
munion Avith that. Hearsays cannot hide it from 15 
him; he is blind, homeless, miserable, following 
hearsays ; it glares-in upon him. Really his utter- 
ances, are they not a kind of 'revelation'; — what 
we must call such for want of some other name ? 
It is from the heart of the world that he comes ; 20 
he is portion of the primal reality of things. God 
has made many revelations ; but this man too, has 
not God made him, the latest and newest of all ? 
The 'inspiration of the Almighty giveth him under- 
standing ' : we must listen before all to him. 25 

This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider 
as an Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious 
ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive him so. 
The rude message he delivered was a real one 
withal ; an earnest confused voice from the uu- 30 
known Deep. The man's words were not false, nor 
his workings here below; no Inanity and Sinuila- 



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V ••"' 



M^2^ 



62 LECTURES ON HEROES 

cruDQ ; a fiery mass of Life cast-up from the great 
bosom of Nature herself. To kindle the world; 
the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither 
can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of 
6 Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against 
him, shake this primary fact about him. 

On the whole, we make too much of faults ; the 
details of the business hide the real centre of it. 
Faults? \The greatest of faults, I should say, is 

10 to be conscious of none. Headers of the Bible 
above all, one w^uld think, might know better. 
Who is called there Hhe man according to God's 
own heart ' ? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen 
into sins enough ; blackest crimes ; there was no 

15 want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer 
and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart ? 
The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow 
one. What are faults, what are the outward details 
of a life ; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temp- 

20 tations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of 
it, be forgotten ? ' It is not in man that walketh 
to direct his steps. ' Of all acts, is not, for a man, 
repentance the most divine ? The deadliest sin, I 
say, were that same supercilious consciousness of 

25 no sin; — that is death; the heart so conscious is 
divorced from sincerity, humility and fact ; is dead : 
it is ^ pure ' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life 
and history, as written for us in those Psalms of 
his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given 

30 of a man's moral progress and warfare here below. 
All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faith- 
ful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what 



THE HEBO AS PEOPHET 63 

is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore 
baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle 
never ended ; ever, with, tears, repentance, true un- 
conquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human 
nature ! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always 5 
that : ' a succession of falls ' ? Man can do no other. A 
In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle j 
onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with \ 
tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to 
rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his 16/ 
struggle be a faithful unconquerable one : that is 
the question of questions. We will put-up with 
many sad details, if the' soul of it were true. De- 
tails by themselves will never teach us what it is. 
I believe we misestimate Mahomet's faults even 15 
as faults: but the secret of him will never be got 
by dwelling there. We will leave all this behind 
us ; and assuring ourselves that he did mean some 
true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be. 

These Arabs Mahomet was born among are cer- 20 
tainly a notable people. Their country itself is 
notable ; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage 
inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, 
alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wher- 
ever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odor- 25 
iferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. 
Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, 
silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from 
habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with 
the Universe ; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it 30 
with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep 



64 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

Heaven with, its stars. Such, a country is fit for a 
swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is 
something most agile, active, and yet most medita- 
tive, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Per- 
5 sians are called the French, of the East ; we will 
call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble 
people ; a people of wild strong feelings, and of 
iron restraint over these : the characteristic of noble- 
mindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes 

10 the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all 
that is there ; were it his worst enemy, he will slay 
his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred 
hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on 
Ms way ; — and then, by another law as sacred, kill 

15 him if he can. In words too, as in action. They 
are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather ; but 
eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest, 
truthful kind of men. They are, as we know, of 
Jewish, kindred : but with, that deadly terrible ear- 

20 nestness of the Jews they seem to combine some- 
thing graceful, brilliant, which, is not Jewish. They 
had ' Poetic contests ' among them before the time 
of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh, in the South of 
Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the 

25 merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes : — 
the wild people gathered to hear that. 

One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the 
outcome of many or of all high qualities : what we 
may call religiosity. From of old they had been 

30 zealous worshippers, according to their light. They 
worshipped the stars, as Sabeans ; worshipped many 
natural objects, — recognised them as symbols, im- 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 65 

mediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It 
was wrong ; and yet not wholly wrong. All God's 
works are still in a sense symbols of God. Do we 
not, as I urged, still account it a merit to recognise 
a certain inexhaustible significance, ^ poetic beauty ' 5 
as we name it, in all natural objects whatsoever ? 
A man is a poet, and honoured, for doing that,, and 
speaking or singing it, — a kind of diluted worship. 
They had many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers 
each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. 10 
But indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of 
proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what de- 
voutness and noblemindedness had dwelt in these 
rustic thoughtful peoples ? Biblical critics seem 
agreed that our own Book of Job was written in 15 
that regioD of the world. I call that, apart from 
all theories about it, one of the grandest things ever 
written with pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were 
not Hebrew ; such a noble universality, different 
from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in 20 
it. A noble Book ; all men's Book ! It is our first, 
oldest statement of the never-ending Problem, — 
man's destiny, and God's ways with him here in 
this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines ; 
grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity ; in its epic 25 
melody, and repose of reconcilement. There is the 
seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. So 
true everyway ; true eyesight and vision for all 
things ; material things no less than spiritual : the 
Horse, — ' hast thou clothed his neck with thunder f ' 30 
— he ' laughs at the shaking of the spear ! ' Such 
living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime 



66 LECTURES ON HEROES 

sorrow, sublime reconciliation ;, oldest choral melody 
as of tlie heart of mankind ; — so soft, and great ; 
as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas 
and stars ! There is nothing written, I think, in 
5 the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. — 
To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient 
universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, 
still kept in the building called Caabah at Mecca. 
Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way 

10 not to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured 
temple in his time ; that is, some half-century be- 
fore our Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some 
likelihood that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In 
that case, some man might see it fall out of Heaven ! 

15 It stands now beside the Well Zemzem ; the Caabah 
is built over both. A Well is in all places a beau- 
tiful affecting object, gushing out like life from the 
hard earth ; — still more so in those hot dry coun- 
tries, where it is the first condition of being. The 

20 Well Zemzem has its name from the bubbling sound 
of the waters, zem-zem; they think it is the Well 
which Hagar found with her little Ishmael in the 
wilderness : the aerolite and it have been sacred 
now, and had a Caabah over them, for thousands of 

25 years. A curious object, that Caabah ! There it 
stands at this hour, in the black cloth-covering the 
Sultan sends it yearly ; ' twenty-seven cubits high ; ' 
with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, with 
festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments : the 

30 lamps will be lighted again this night, — to glitter 
again under the stars. An authentic fragment of 
the oldest Past. It is the Keblah of all Moslem : 



THE HERO AS PBOPHET 67 

from Dellii all onwards to Morocco, the eyes of in- 
numerable praying men are turned towards it, five 
times, this day and all days : one of the notablest 
centres in the Habitation of Men. 

It had been from the sacredness attached to this 5 
Caabah Stone and Hagar's Well, from the pilgrim- 
ings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca took 
its rise as a Town. A great town once, though 
mach decayed now. It has no natural advantage 
for a town ; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare 10 
barren hills, at a distance from the sea ; its provi- 
sions, its very bread, have to be imported. But so 
many pilgrims needed lodgings : and then all places 
of pilgrimage do, from the first, become places of 
trade. The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have 15 
also met : where men see themselves assembled for 
one object, they find that they can accomplish other 
objects which depend on meeting together. Mecca 
became the Eair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed 
the chief staple and warehouse of whatever Com- 20 
merce there was between the Indian and the West- 
ern countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at 
one time a population of 100,000 ; buyers, for- 
warders of those Eastern and Western products; 
importers for their own behoof of provisions and 25 
corn. The government was a kind of irregular 
aristocratic republic, not without a touch of theoc- 
racy. Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some 
rough way, were Governors of Mecca, and Keepers 
of the Caabah. The Koreish were the chief tribe 30 
in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that 
tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut- 



68 LECTURES ON HEROES 

asunder by deserts, lived under similar rude patri- 
archal governments by one or several : lierdsmen, 
carriers, traders, generally robbers too ; being of ten- 
est at war one with another, or with all : held to- 

5 gether by no open bond, if it were not this meeting 
at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry 
assembled in common adoration ; — held mainly by 
the inward indissoluble bond of a common blood 
and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for 

10 long ages, unnoticed by the world ; a people of great 
qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when 
they should become notable to all the world. Their 
Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state ; 
much was getting into confusion and fermentation 

15 among them. Obscure tidings of the most impor- 
tant Event ever transacted in this world, the Life 
and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the 
symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all 
people in the world, had in the course of centuries 

20 reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of 
itself, have produced fermentation there. 

It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, 
in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet 
was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of 

25 the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, con- 
nected with the chief persons of his country. Al- 
most at his birth he lost his Eather ; at the age of 
six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her 
beauty, her worth and sense : he fell to the charge 

30 of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years 
old. A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 69 

had been his youngest favourite son. He saw in 
Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century 
old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was 
left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy 
greatly ; used to say, They must take care of that 5 
beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was 
more precious than he. At his death, while the boy 
was still but two years old, he left him in charge to 
Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that 
now was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just 10 
and rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet 
was brought-up in the best Arab way. 

Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle 
on trading journeys and suchlike ; in his eighteenth 
year one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in 15 
war. But perhaps the most significant of all his 
journeys is one we find noted as of some years' 
earlier date : a journey to the Eairs of Syria. The 
young man here first came in contact with a quite 
foreign world, — with one foreign element of end- 20 
less moment to him : the Christian Eeligion. I 
know not what to make of that ^ Sergius, the Nes- 
torian Monk,' whom Abu Thaleb and he are said to 
have lodged with ; or how much any monk could 
have taught one still so young. Probably enough it 25 
is greatly exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. 
Mahomet was only fourteen ; had no language but 
his own : much in Syria must have been a strange 
unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of 
the lad were open ; glimpses of many things would 30 
doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, 
which were to ripen in a strange way into views, 



70 LECTURES ON HEROES 

into beliefs and insights one day. Tiiese journeys 
to Syria were probably the beginning of mucli to 
Mahomet. 

One other circumstance we must not forget : that 
5 he had no school-learning; of the thing we call 
school-learning none at all. The art of writing 
was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to 
be the true opinion that Mahomet never could 
write ! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, 

10 was all his education. What of this infinite Uni- 
verse he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and 
thoughts, could take in, so much and no more 
of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect 
on it, this of having no books. Except by what 

15 he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain 
rumour of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he 
could know nothing. The wisdom that had been 
before him or at a distance from him in the world, 
was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of 

20 the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so 
many lands and times, no one directly communi- 
cates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep 
down in the bosom of the Wilderness ; has to grow 
up so, — alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. 

25 But, from an early age, he had been remarked as 
a thoughtful man. His companions named him ^Al 
Amin, The Faithful.' A man of truth and fidelity ; 
true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. 
They noted that he always meant something. A 

30 man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there 
was nothing to be said ; but pertinent, wise, sincere, 
when he did speak ; always throwing light on the 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 71 

matter. This is the only sort of speech loorth 
speaking ! Through life we find him to have been 
regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine 
man. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, 
cordial, companionable, jocose even ; — a good laugh 5 
in him withal: there are men whose laugh. is as 
untrue as anything about them ; who cannot laugh. 
One hears of Mahomet's beauty : his fine sagacious 
honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black 
eyes ; — I somehow like too that vein on the brow, lO 
which swelled-up black when he was in anger : like 
the 'liOTse-slioe vein' in Scott's Redgauntlet. It was 
a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black 
swelling vein in the brow ; Mahomet had it promi- 
nent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, lo 
yet just, trne-meaning man ! Full of wild faculty, 
fire and light ; of wild worth, all uncultured ; work- 
ing out his life-task in the depths of the Desert 
there. 

How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, 20 
as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again 
to the Fairs of Syria ; how he managed all, as one 
can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness ; how 
her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story 
of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligi- 25 
ble one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was 
twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He 
seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peace- 
able, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress ; 
loving her truly, and her alone. It goes greatly 30 
against the impostor theory, the fact that he lived 
in this entirely unexceptionable, entirely quiet and 



72 LECTURES ON HEROES 

commonplace way, till the heat of his years was 
done. He was forty before he talked of any mission 
from Heaven. All his irregularities, real and sup- 
posed, date from after his fiftieth, year, when the 
5 good Kadijah died. All liis ' ambition/ seemingly, 
had been, hitherto, to live an honest life ; his 'fame,' 
the mere good opinion of neighbours that knew him, 
had been sufficient hitherto. Not till he was already 
getting old, the prurient heat of his life all burnt 

10 out, and peace growing to be the chief thing this 
world could give him, did he start on the ' career of 
ambition ' ; and, belying all his past character and 
existence, set-up as a wretched empty charlatan to 
acquire what he could now no longer enjoy ! For 

15 my share, I have no faith whatever in that. 

Ah no : this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, 
with his beaming black eyes and open social deep 
soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition. A 
silent great soul ; he was one of those who cannot 

20 hut be in earnest; whom Nature herself has ap- 
pointed to be sincere. While others walk in for- 
mulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell 
there, this man could not screen himself in for- 
mulas; he was alone with his own soul and the 

25 reality of things. The great Mystery of Existence, 
as I said, glared-in upon him, with its terrors, with 
its splendours ; no hearsays could hide that unspeak- 
able fact, "Here am I!". Such sincerity, as we 
named it, has in very truth something of divine. 

30 The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nat- 
ure's own Heart. Men do and must listen to that 
as to nothing else ; — all else is wind in comparison. 



THE B^BO AS PROPHJST 73 

From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrim- 
ings and wanderings, had been in this man : What 
am I ? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, 
which men name Universe ? What is Life ; what 
is Death ? What am I to believe ? What am I to 5 
do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount 
Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The 
great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue- 
glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. 
TEeTiimi's own soul, and what of God's inspiration lO 
dwelt there, had to answer ! 

It is the thing which all men have to ask them- 
selves; which we too have to ask, and answer. 
This wild man felt it to be of infinite moment ; all 
other things of no moment whatever in comparison. 15 
The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague tra- 
ditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry : 
there was no answer in these. A Hero, as I repeat, 
has this first distinction, which indeed we may call 
first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole 20 
Heroism, That he looks through the shows of things 
into things. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, 
respectable formula : all these are good, or are not 
good. There is something behind and beyond all 
these, which all these must correspond with, be the 25 
image of, or they are — Idolatries; ''bits of black 
wood pretending to be God ; ' to the earnest soul a 
mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so 
gilded, waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do 
nothing for this man. Though all men walk by 30 
them, what good is it ? The great Eeality stands 
glaring there upon him. He there has to answer 



74 LECTUBES OJSr HEROES 

it, or perish, miserably. ISTow, even now, or else 
tlirough all Eternity never ! Answer it ; tJiou must 
find an answer. — Ambition ? What could all Ara- 
bia do for this man; with the crown of Greek 
5 Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all crowns in the 
Earth ; — what conld they all do for him ? It was 
not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell ; it was of 
the Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. All 
crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would 

10 tJiey in a few brief years be ? To be Sheik of Mecca 
or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into 
your hand, — will that be one's salvation? I de- 
cidedly think, not. We will leave it altogether, 
this impostor hypothesis, as not credible ; not very 

15 tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us. 

Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during 

the month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence ; as 

indeed was the Arab custom ; a praiseworthy custom, 

which such a man, above all, would find natural and 

20 useful. Communing with, his own heart, in the 
silence of the mountains ; himself silent ; open to 
the ' small still voices ' : it was a right natural 
custom ! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when 
having withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near 

25 Mecca, during this E,amadhan, to pass the month in 
prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he 
one day told his wife Kadijah, who with his house- 
hold was with him or near him this year. That by 
the unspeakable special favour of Heaven he had 

30 now found it all out ; was in doubt and darkness 
no longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols and 
Eormulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 75 

that there was One God in and over all; and we 
must leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God 
is great ; and that there is nothing else great ! He 
is the Eeality. Wooden Idols are not real ; He is 
real. He made us at first, sustains us yet ; we and 5 
all things are but the shadow of Him ; a transitory 
garment veiling the Eternal Splendour. ^ Allah 
akbar, God is great ; ' — and then also ' Islam/ That 
we must submit to God. That our whole strength 
lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He 10 
do to us. For this world, and for the other ! The 
thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than 
death, shall be good, shall be best ; we resign our- 
selves to God. — ^ If this be Islam,'' says Goethe, 
* do we not all live in Islam 9 ' Yes, all of us that 15 
have any moral life; we all live so. It has ever 
been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely 
to submit to Necessity, — Necessity will make him 
submit, — but to know and believe well that the 
stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the 20 
wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease 
his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's- 
World in his small fraction of a brain; to know 
that it had verily, though deep beyond his sound- 
ings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good ; — 25 
that his part in it was to conform to the Law of 
the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; ,not 
questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable. 

I say, this is yet the only true morality known. 
A man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the 30 
road towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins 
himself to the great deep Law of the World, in 



T6 LECTUBlSS ON HEROES 

spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, 
profit-and-loss calculations ; he is victorious while 
he cooperates with that great central Law, not vic- 
torious otherwise : — and surely his first chance of 
5 cooperating with it, or getting into the course of 
it, is to know with his whole soul that it is; that it 
is good, and alone good ! This is the soul of Islam ; 
it is properly the soul of Christianity ; — for Islam 
is definable as a confused form of Christianity ; 

10 had Christianity not been, neither had it been. 
Christianity also commands us, before all, to be 
resigned to God. We are to take no counsel with 
flesh-and-blood ; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sor- 
rows and wishes : to know that we know nothing ; 

15 that the worst and crudest to our eyes is not what 
it seems; that we have to receive whatsoever be- 
falls us as sent from God above, and say. It is good 
and wise, God is great ! " Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust in Him." Islam means in its way De- 

20 nial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the 
highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our 
Earth. 

Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate 
the darkness of this wild Arab soul. A confused 

25 dazzling splendour as of life and Heaven, in the 
great darkness which threatened to be death : he 
called it revelation and the angel Gabriel ; — who 
of us yet can know what to call it ? It is the 
^inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us un- 

30 derstanding.' To know; to get into the truth of 
anything, is ever a mystic act, — of which the 
best Logics can but babble on the surface. ^ Is 



THE HEBO AS PROPHET 77 

not Belief tlie true god-announcing Miracle ? ' says 
Novalis. — That Mahomet's whole soul^ set in flame 
with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel 
as if it were important and the only important 
thing, was very natural. That Providence had un- 5 
speakably honoured him by revealing it, saving him 
from death and darkness ; that he therefore was 
bound to make known the same to all creatures : 
this is what was meant by ^Mahomet is the 
Prophet of God ' ; this too is not without its true 10 
meaning. — 

The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him 
with wonder, with doubt : at length she answered : 
Yes, it was true this that he said. One can fancy 
too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet ; and how 15 
of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of 
believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke 
was the greatest. ^ It is certain,' says Novalis, ' my 
Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another 
soul will believe in it.' It is a boundless favour. — 20 
He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long after- 
wards, Ayesha his young favourite wife, a woman 
who indeed distinguished herself among the Mos- 
lem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole 
long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one 25 
day, questioning him : " Now am not I better than 
Kadijah ? She was a widow ; old, and had lost her 
looks : you love me better than you did her ? " — 
" No, by Allah ! " answered Mahomet : " No, by 
Allah ! She believed in me when none else would 30 
believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, 
and she was that ! " — Seid, his Slave, also believed 



78 LECTURES ON HEROES 

in him ; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu 
Thaleb's son, were his first converts. 

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that ; 
but the most treated it with ridicule, with indiffer- 
5 ence ; in three years, I think, he had gained but 
thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. 
His encouragement to go on, was altogether the 
usual encouragement that such a man in such a 
case meets. After some three years of small suc- 

10 cess, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an 
entertainment ; and there stood-up and told them 
what his pretension was : that he had this thing to 
promulgate abroad to all men ; that it was the 
highest thing, the one thing : which of them would 

15 second him in that ? Amid the doubt and silence 
of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient 
of the silence, started-up, and exclaimed in passion- 
ate fierce language. That he would ! The assembly, 
among whom was Abu Thaleb, All's Father, could 

20 not be unfriendly to Mahomet ; yet the sight there, 
of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, 
deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, 
appeared ridiculous to them ; the assembly broke- 
up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laugh- 

25 able thing; it was a very serious thing! As for 
this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble- 
minded creature, as he shows himself, now and 
always afterwards ; full of affection, of fiery daring. 
Something chivalrous in him ; brave as a lion ; yet 

30 with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Chris- 
tian knighthood. He died by assassination in the 
Mosque at Bagdad ; a death occasioned by his own 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 79 

generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of 
others : lie said, If the wound proved not unto 
death, they must pardon the Assassin; but if it 
did, then they must slay him straightway, that so 
they two in the same hour might appear before 5 
God, and see which side of that quarrel was the 
just one ! 

Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, 
Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the 
Idols. One or two men of influence had joined 10 
him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spread- 
ing. Naturally he gave offence to everybody : Who 
is this that pretends to be wiser than we all ; that 
rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of 
wood! Abu Thaleb the good Uncle spoke with 15 
him : Could he not be silent about all that ; believe 
it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the 
chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking 
of it ? Mahomet answered : If the Sun stood on 
his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering 20 
him to hold his peace, he could not obey ! No : 
there was something in this Truth he had got 
which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to 
Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had 
made. It would speak itself there, so long as the 25 
Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, 
and all Koreish and all men and things. It must 
do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered 
so; and, they say, 'burst into tears.' Burst into 
tears : he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him ; 30 
that the task he had got was no soft, but a stern 
and great one. 



80 LECTURES ON HEROES 

He went on speaking to who would listen to him ; 
publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they 
came to Mecca ; gaining adherents in this place and 
that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or se- 
5 cret danger attended him. His powerful relations 
protected Mahomet himself ; but by and by, on his 
own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, 
and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The 
Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore 

10 oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with 
their own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good 
Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of 
sympathy from us ; but his outlook at this time 
was one of the dismalest. He had to hide in cav- 

15 erns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; 
homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than 
once it seemed all-over with him ; more than once 
it turned on a straw, some rider's horse taking 
fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his Doc- 

20 trine had not ended there, and not been heard of 
at all. But it was not to end so. 

In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his 
enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, 
one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, 

25 and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any 
longer, Mahomet fled to the place then called 
Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents ; 
the place they now call Medina, or ' Medinat al 
Nahi, the City of the Prophet,' from that circum- 

30 stance. It lay some 200 miles off, through rocks 
and deserts; not without great difiiculty, in such 
mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and 



THE HEEO AS PROPHET 81 

found welcome. The whole East dates its era 
from this Flight, Hegira as they name it: the 
Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty- 
third of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming 
an old man; his friends sinking round him one 5 
by one; his path desolate, encompassed with dan- 
ger : unless he could find hope in his own heart, 
the outward face of things was but hopeless for 
him. It is so with all men in the like case. 
Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his lo 
Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion 
alone. But now, driven foully out of his native 
country, since unjust men had not only given no 
ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, the deep cry 
of his heart, but would not even let him live if he is 
kept speaking it, — the wild Son of the Desert 
resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab. 
If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. 
Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and 
all men, they would not listen to these; would 20 
trample them down by sheer violence, steel and 
murder : well, let steel try it then ! Ten years 
more this Mahomet had ; all of fighting, of breath- 
less impetuous toil and struggle ; with what result 
we know. 25 

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating 
his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far 
nobler what we have to boast of the Christian 
Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in 
the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, 30 
if we take this for an argument of the truth or 
falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake 



82 LECTUBES ON EEEOES 

in it. The sword indeed : but where will you get 
your sword ! Every new opinion, at its starting, 
is precisely in a mmority of one. In one man's 
head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone 
5 of the whole world believes it ; there is one man 
against all men. That he take a sword, and try 
to propagate with that, will do little for him. 
You must first get your sword ! On the whole, 
a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do 

10 not find, of the Christian Religion either, that 
it always disdained the sword, when once it had 
got one. Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons 
was not by preaching. I care little about the 
sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself 

15 in this world, with any sword or tongue or imple- 
ment it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it 
preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the 
uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, 
whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the 

20 long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve 
to be conquered. What is better than itself, it 
cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this 
great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do 
no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in 

25 Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the 
other will be found growing at last. 

Here however, in reference to much that there 
is in Mahomet and his success, we are to remember 
what an umpire Nature is ; what a greatness, com- 

30 posure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You 
take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom: your 
wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw. 



THE HERO AS PBOPHET 83 

barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; 
no matter : you cast it into the kind, just, Earth ; 
she grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she 
silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the 
rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there ; the 5 
good Earth is silent about all the rest, — has 
silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, 
and makes no complaint about it ! So everywhere 
in Nature ! She is true and not a lie ; and yet so 
great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She lo 
requires of a thing only that it be genuine of 
heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not 
so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she 
ever gave harbour to. Alas, is not this the history 
of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into 15 
the world ? The body of them all is imperfection, 
an element of light in darkness: to us they have 
to come embodied in mere Logic, in some merely 
scientific Theorem of the Universe; which cannot 
be complete ; which cannot but be found, one day, 20 
mcomplete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. 
The body of all Truth dies ; and yet in all, I say, 
there is a soul which never dies ; which in new 
and ever-nobler embodiment lives immortal as man 
himself ! It is the way with Nature. The genuine 25 
essence of Truth never dies. That it be genuine, a 
voice from the great Deep of Nature, there is the 
point at Nature's judgment-seat. What we call 
pure or impure, is not with her the final question. 
Not how much chaff is in you; but whether you 30 
have any wheat. Pure ? I might say to many a 
man ; Yes, you are pure ; pure enough ; but you 



84 LECTURES ON HEROES 

are chaff, — insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formal- 
ity; you never were in contact with the great 
heart of the Universe at all; you are properly 
neither pure nor impure ; you are nothing, Nature 

5 has no business with you. 

Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christian- 
ity ; and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnest- 
ness with which it was believed and laid to heart, 
I should say a better kind than that of those 

10 miserable Syrian Sects, with their vain j anglings 
about Homoiousion and Homoousion, the head full 
of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead! 
The truth of it is embedded in portentous error 
and falsehood; but the truth of it makes it be 

15 believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded by its 
truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a liv- 
ing kind ; with a heart-life in it ; not dead, chop- 
ping barren logic merely ! Out of all that rubbish 
of Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, tradi- 

20 tions, subtleties, rumours and hypotheses of Greeks 
and Jews, with their idle wi redrawings , this wild 
man of the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, 
earnest as death and life, with his great flashing 
natural eyesight, had seen into the kernel of the 

25 matter. Idolatry is nothing : these Wooden Idols 
of yours, 'ye rub them with oil and wax, and the 
flies stick on. them,' — these are wood, I tell you ! 
They can do nothing for you; they are an impo- 
tent blasphemous pretence; a horror and abomi- 

30 nation, if ye knew them. God alone is ; God alone 
has power; He made us, He can kill us and keep 
us alive: 'Allah aJcbar, God is great.' Understand 



THE HEBO AS PBOPHET 85 

that His will is the best for yon ; that howsoever 
sore to flesh-and-blood, you will find it the wisest, 
best: you are bound to take it so; in this world 
and in the next, you have no other thing that you 
can do! 5 

And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe 
this, and with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to 
do it, in what form soever it came to them, I say 
it was well worthy of being believed. In one form 
or the other, I say it is still the one thing worthy lo 
of being believed by all men. Man does hereby 
become the high-priest of this Temple of a World. 
He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author 
of this World; cooperating with them, not vainly 
withstanding them : I know, to this day, no better 15 
definition of Duty than that same. All that is 
right includes itself in this of cooperating with the 
real Tendency of the World : you succeed by this 
(the World's Tendency will succeed), you are good, 
and in the right course there. Homoiousion, Ho- 20 
moousion, vain logical jangle, then or before or at 
any time, may jangle itself out, and go whither 
and how it likes : this is the thing it all struggles 
to mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not 
succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. Not 25 
that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly 
worded or incorrectly ; but that living concrete 
Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the 
important point. Islam devoured all these vain 
jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. 30 
It was a Keality, direct from the great Heart of 
Nature once more. Arab idolatries, Syrian for- 



86 LECTURES ON HEROES 

mulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go 
up in flame, — mere dead fuel, in various senses, 
for this which was JirSo 

It was during these wild warfarings and strug- 

5 glings, especially after the Flight to Mecca, that 
Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, 
which they name Koran, or Heading, ' Thing to be 
read.' This is the Work he and his disciples made 
so much of, asking all the world, Is not that a mira- 

10 cle ? The Mahometans regard their Koran with a 
reverence which few Christians pay even to their 
Bible. It is admitted everywhere as the standard 
of all law and all practice ; the thing to be gone- 
upon in speculation and life: the message sent 

15 direct out of Heaven, which this Earth has to con- 
form to, and walk by ; the thing to be read. Their 
Judges decide by it ; all Moslem are bound to study 
it, seek in it for the light of their life. They have 
mosques where it is all read daily; thirty relays 

20 of priests take it up in succession, get through the 
whole each day. There, for twelve-hundred years, 
has the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept 
sounding through the ears and the hearts of so 
many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors that 

25 had read it seventy-thousand times ! 

Very curious : if one sought for ' discrepancies of 
national taste,' here surely were the most eminent 
instance of that ! We also can read the Koran ; 
our Translation of it, by Sale, is known to be a very 

30 fair one. I must say, it is as toilsome reading as 
I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble. 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 87 

crude, incondite ; endless iterations, long-winded- 
ness, entanglement ; most crude, incondite ; — in- 
supportable stupidity, in short ! Nothing but a 
sense of duty could carry any European through 
the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State- 5 
Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that 
perhaps we may get some glimpses of a remarkable 
man. It is true we have it under disadvantages : the 
Arabs see more method in it than we. Mahomet's 
followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, 10 
as it had been written-down at first promulgation ; 
much of it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mut- 
ton, flung pell-mell into a chest: and they pub- 
lished it, without any discoverable order as to time 
or otherwise ; — merely trying, as Avould seem, and 15 
this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters 
first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies 
almost at the end: for the earliest portions were 
the shortest. Eead in its historical sequence it 
perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they 20 
say, is rhythmic ; a kind of wild chanting song, in^ 
the original. This may be a great point ; m»<m 
perhaps has been lost in the Translation he*^ Yet 
with every allowance, one feels it^^^^^^ult to see 
how any mortal ever could coii^^^ this Koran as 25 
a Book written in Heaven, ^^^^ood for the Earth ; 
as a well-written book, oyindeed as a book at all ; 
and not a bewildered rhapsody ; written, so far as 
writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever 
was ! So much for national discrepancies, and the 30 
standard of taste. 

Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how 



88 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

the Arabs miglit so love it. When once you get 
this confused coil of a Koran fairly off your hands, 
and have it behind you at a distance, the essential 
type of it begins to disclose itself ; and in this there 

5 is a merit quite other than the literary one. If a 
book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach 
other hearts ; all art and authorcraft are of small 
amount to that. One would say the primary char- 
acter of the Koran is this of its genuineness, of its 

10 being a hona-fide book. Prideaux, I know, and 
others have represented it as a mere bundle of 
juggleries ; chapter after chapter got-up to excuse 
and varnish the author's successive sins, forward 
his ambitions and quackeries : but really it is time 

15 to dismiss all that. I do not assert Mahomet's con- 
tinual sincerity : who is continually sincere ? But 
I confess I can make nothing of the critic, in these 
times, who would accuse him of deceit prepense; 
of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps at all ; — 

20 still more, of living in a mere element of conscious 
deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger and 
juggler would have done ! Every candid eye, I 
think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. 
It is the confused ferment of a great rude human 

25 soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read, but 
fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter 
itself in words. With a kind of breathless inten- 
sity he strives to utter himself ; the thoughts crowd 
on him pell-mell : for very multitude of things to 

30 say, he can get nothing said. The meaning that 
is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, 
is stated in no sequence, method or coherence ; — 



TBE HEBO AS PBOPHET 89 

they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of his ; 
flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble 
there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We said 
^ stupid ' : yet natural stupidity is by no means the 
character of Mahomet's Book ; it is natural uncul- 5 
tivation rather. The man has not studied speak- 
ing ; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, 
has not time to mature himself into fit speech. 
The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a 
man struggling in the thick of battle for life and lo 
salvation ; this is the mood he is in ! A headlong 
haste ; for very magnitude of meaning, he cannot 
get himself articulated into words. The successive 
utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by the 
various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years ; now 15 
well uttered, now worse : this is the Koran. 

Eor we are to consider Mahomet, through these 
three-and-twenty years, as the centre of a world 
wholly in conflict. Battles with the Koreish and 
Heathen, quarrels among his own people, backslid- 20 
ings of his own wild heart; all this kept him in 
a perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest no more. 
In wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul 
of the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail 
any light of a decision for them as a veritable light 25 
from Heaven ; any making-up of his mind, so blessed, 
indispensable for him there, would seem the inspira- 
tion of a Gabriel. Eorger and juggler ? No, no ! 
This great fiery heart, seething, simmering like a 
great furnace of thoughts, was not a juggler's. His 30 
life was a Eact to him ; this God's Universe an aw- 
ful Fact and Eeality. He has faults enough. The 



90 LECTURES OJSr HEROES 

man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nat- 
ure, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him : we 
must take him for that. But for a wretched Simu- 
lacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart, 
5 practising for a mess of pottage such blasphemous 
swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, continual 
high-treason against his Maker and Self, we will 
not and cannot take him. 

Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of 

10 the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the 
wild Arab men. It is, after all, the first and last 
merit in a book ; gives rise to merits of all kinds, 
-^nay, at bottom, it alone can give rise to merit 
of any kind. Curiously, through these incondite 

15 masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejacu- 
lation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, 
of what we might almost call poetry, is found 
straggling. The body of the Book is made-up of 
mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusi- 

20 astic extempore preaching. He returns forever to 
the old stories of the Prophets as they went 
current in the Arab memory : how Prophet after 
Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, 
the Prophet Moses, Christian and other real and 

25 fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe and to 
that, warning men of their sin ; and been received 
by them even as he Mahomet was, — which is a 
great solace to him. These things he repeats ten, 
perhaps twenty times ; again and ever again, with 

30 wearisome iteration ; has never done repeating 
them. A brave Samuel Johnson, in his forlorn 
garret, might con-over the Biographies of Authors 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 91 

in that way ! This is the great staple of the 
Koran. But curiously, through all this, comes 
ever and anon some glance as of the real thinker 
and seer. He has actually an eye for the world, 
this Mahomet : with a certain directness and rug- 5 
ged vigour, he brings home still, to our heart, the 
thing his own heart has been opened to. I make 
but little of his praises of Allah, which many 
praise ; they are borrowed I suppose mainly from 
the Hebrew, at least they are far surpassed there. lO 
But the eye that flashes direct into the heart of 
things, and sees the truth of them ; this is to me 
a highly interesting object. Great Nature's own 
gift ; which she bestows on all ; but which only 
one in the thousand does not cast sorrowfully 15 
away: it is what I call sincerity of vision; the 
test of a sincere heart. 

Mahomet can work no miracles ; he often answers 
impatiently : I can work no miracles. I ? ' I am a 
Public Preacher ; ' appointed to preach this doctrine 20 
to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had 
really from of old been all one great miracle to 
him. Look over the world, says he ; is it not won- 
derful, the work of Allah ; wholly ' a sign to you,' 
if your eyes were open ! This Earth, God made 25 
it for you ; ' appointed paths in it ; ' you can live 
in it, go to and fro on it. — The clouds in the dry 
country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very won- 
derful: Great clouds, he says, born in the deep 
bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they come 30 
from ! They hang there, the great black monsters ; 
pour-down their rain-deluges 'to revive a dead 



92 LECTXJBES ON HEBOBS 

'earth/ and grass springs, and 'tall leafy palm- 
' trees with, their date-clusters hanging round. Is 
' not that a sign ? ' Your cattle too, — Allah made 
them ; serviceable dumb creatures ; they change 

5 the grass into milk ; you have your clothing from 
them, very strange creatures ; they come ranking 
home at evening-time, 'and,' adds he, 'and are a 
credit to you ! ' Ships also, — he talks often about 
ships : Huge moving mountains, they spread-out 

10 their cloth wings, go bounding through the water 
there. Heaven's wind driving them ; anon they lie 
motionless, God has* withdrawn the wind, they lie 
dead, and cannot stir ! Miracles ? cries he : What 
miracle would you have ? Are not you yourselves 

15 there ? God made you, ' shaped you out of a little 
clay.' Ye were small once; a few years ago ye 
were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, 
'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age 
comes-on you, and gray hairs ; your strength fades 

20 into feebleness ; ye sink down, and again are not. 
' Ye have compassion on one another : ' this struck 
me much : Allah might have made you having no 
compassion on one another, — how had it been then ! 
This is a great direct thought, a glance at first- 

25 hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges 
of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, 
are visible in this man. A strong untutored intel- 
lect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man, — might 
have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any 

30 kind of Hero. 

To his eyes it is forever clear that this world 
wholly is miraculous. He sees what, as we said 



TBE H:^R0 As PBOPBEf 93 

once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandina- 
vians themselves, in one way or other, have con- 
trived to see: That this so solid-looking material 
world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a 
visual and tactual Manifestation of God's power 5 
and presence, — a shadow hung-out by Him on the 
bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more. The 
mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, 
they shall dissipate themselves ' like clouds ' ; melt 
into the Blue as clouds do, and not be ! He figures 10 
the Earth, in the Arab fashion. Sale tells us, as an 
immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the moun- 
tains are set on that to steady it. At the Last Day 
they shall disappear ^ like clouds ' ; the whole Earth 
shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and 15 
as dust and vapour vanish in the Inane. Allah 
withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. 
The universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere 
of an unspeakable Power, a Splendour, and a Terror 
not to be named, as the true force, essence and 20 
reality, in all things whatsoever, was continually 
clear to this man. What a modern talks-of by the 
name. Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature ; and does 
not figure as a divine thing ; not even as one thing 
at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough, — 25 
saleable, curious, good for propelling steam-ships ! 
With our Sciences and Cyclopsedias, we are apt to 
forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. 
We ought not to forget it! That once well for- 
gotten, I know not what else were worth remember- 30 
ing. Most sciences, I think, were then a very dead 
thing ; withered, contentious, empty ; — a thistle in 



94 LECTURES ON HEROES 

late autumn. The best science, without this, is but 
as the dead timber ; it is not the growing tree and 
forest, — which gives ever-new timber, among other 
things ! Man cannot know either, unless he can 
5 worsliip in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, 
and dead thistle, otherwise. 

Much has been said and written about the sensu- 
ality of Mahomet's Religion ; more than was just. 
The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, 

10 were not of his appointment ; he found them prac- 
tised, unquestioned from immemorial time in Ara- 
bia ; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, 
not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not 
an easy one : with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict 

15 complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and 
abstinence from wine, it did not ^ succeed by being 
an easy religion.' As if indeed any religion, or 
cause holding of religion, could succeed by that ! 
It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused 

20 to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recom- 
pense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or 
the next ! In the meanest mortal there lies some- 
thing nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to 
be shot, has his ' honour of a soldier,' different from 

25 drill-regulations and the shilling a day. It is not 
to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true 
things, and vindicate himself under God's Heaven 
as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam 
dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the 

30 dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero. They wrong 
man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. 
Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 95 

allurements that act on tlie heart of man. Kindle the 
inner genial life of him^ you have a flame that burns- 
up all lower considerations. Not happiness, but 
something higher : one sees this even in the frivol- 
ous classes, with their 'point of honour' and the 5 
like. Not by flattering our appetites; no, by 
awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, 
can any E/Cligion gain followers. 

Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about 
him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely 10 
if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, 
intent mainly on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoy- 
ments of any kind. His household was of the f rugal- 
est ; his common diet barley-bread and water : some- 
times for months there was not a fire once lighted 15 
on his hearth. They record with just pride that he 
would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A 
poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man ; careless of what 
vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say ; 
something better in him than hunger of any sort, — 20 
or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three- 
and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with 
him always, would not have reverenced him so! 
They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into 
quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity ; without 25 
right worth and manhood, no man could have com- 
manded them. They called him Prophet, you say ? 
Why, he stood there face to face with them ; bare, 
not enshrined in any mystery ; visibly clouting his 
own cloak, cobbling his own shoes ; fighting, coun- 30 
selling, ordering in the midst of them : they must 
have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be 



96 LECTURES ON HEROES 

called what you like ! No emperor with his tiaras 
was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clout- 
ing. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual 
trial. I find something of a veritable Hero neces- 

5 sary for that, of itself. 

His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations 
of a heart struggling-up, in trembling hope, towards 
its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made 
him worse ; it made him better ; good, not bad. 

10 Generous things are recorded of him : when he lost 
his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own 
dialect, everyway sincere, and yet equivalent to that 
of Christians, ^ The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh 
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He an- 

15 swered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated well- 
beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid 
had fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Ma- 
homet's fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, 
It was well ; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid 

20 had now gone to his Master : it was all well with 
Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over 
the body ; — the old gray-haired man melting in 
tears ! " What do I see ? " said she. — " You see a 
friend weeping over his friend." — He went out for 

25 the last time into the mosque, two days before his 
death ; asked. If he had injured any man ? Let 
his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any 
man ? A voice answered, " Yes, me three drachms," 
borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered 

30 them to be paid : " Better be in shame now," said 
he, " than at the Day of Judgment." — You re- 
member Kadijah, and the " No, by Allah ! " Traits 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 97 

of tliat kind show us the genuine man, the brother 
of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries, 
— the veritable Son of our common Mother. 

Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom 
from cant. He is a rough self -helping son of the 5 
wilderness ; does not pretend to be what he is not. 
There is no ostentatious pride in him ; but neither 
does he go much upon humility : he is there as he 
can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting ; 
speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, 10 
Greek Emperors, what it is they are bound to do ; 
knows. well enough, about himself, ^the respect due 
unto thee.' In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, 
cruel things could not fail ; but neither are acts of 
mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. 15 
Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of 
the other. They were each the free dictate of his 
heart ; each called-f or, there and then. Not a mealy- 
mouthed man ! A candid ferocity, if the case call 
for it, is in him ; he does not mince matters ! The 20 
War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of : his 
men refused, many of them, to march on that occa- 
sion ; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, 
and so forth ; he can never forget that. Your har- 
vest? It lasts for a day. What will become of 25 
your harvest through all Eternity ? Hot weather ? 
Yes, it was hot ; ' but Hell will be hotter ! ' Some- 
times a rough sarcasm turns-up : He says to the 
unbelievers. Ye shall have the just measure of your 
deeds at that G-reat Day. They will be weighed- 30 
out to you ; ye shall not have short weight ! — Every- 
where he fixes the matter in his eye; he sees it: 

H 



98 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the 
greatness of it. ' Assuredly,' he says : that word, 
in the Koran, is written-down sometimes as a sen- 
tence by itself : ' Assuredly.' 
5 No Dilettantism in this Mahomet ; it is a business 
of E,eprobation and Salvation with him, of Time 
and Eternity : he is in deadly earnest about it ! 
Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of 
amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting 

10 with Truth : this is the sorest sin. The root of all 
other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and 
soul of the man never having been ope?i to Truth ; 
— 'living in a vain show.' Such a man not only 
utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a 

15 falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of 
the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet ]3aralysis 
of life-death. The very falsehoods of Mahomet are 
truer than the truths of such a man. He is the 
insincere man : smooth-polished, respectable in some 

20 times and places ; inoffensive, says nothing harsh 
to anybody ; most cleanly, — just as carbonic acid is, 
which is death and poison. 

We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as 
always of the superfinest sort ; yet it can be said 

25 that there is always a tendency to good in them ; 
that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming 
towards what is just and true. The sublime for- 
giveness of Christianity, turning of the other cheek 
when the one has been smitten, is not here : you 

30 are to revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, 
not overmuch, or beyond justice. On the other 
hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight into 



THE HERO AS PBOPHET 99 

the essence of man, is a perfect equaliser of men : 
the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly king- 
ships; all men, according to Islam too, are equal. 
Mahomet insists not on the propriety of giving alms, 
but on the necessity of it : he marks-down by law 5 
how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if 
you neglect. The tenth part of a man's annual in- 
come, whatever that may be, is the property of the 
poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. 
Good all this : the natural voice of humanity, of 10 
pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this wild 
Son of Nature speaks so. 

Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual : 
true ; in the one and the other there is enough 
that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are 15 
to recollect that the Arabs already had it so ; 
that Mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, soft- 
ened and diminished all this. The worst sensuali- 
ties, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not 
his work. In the Koran there is really very little 20 
said about the joys of Paradise ; they are intimated 
rather than insisted on. Nor is it forgotten that 
the highest joys even there shall be spiritual : the 
pure Presence of the Highest, this shall infinitely 
transcend all other joys. He says, ^ Your salutation 25 
shall be, Peace.' Salam, Have Peace ! — the thing 
that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly 
here below, as the one blessing. ' Ye shall sit on 
' seats, facing one another : all grudges shall be taken 
^ away out of your hearts.' All grudges ! Ye shall 30 
love one another freely; for each of you, in the 
eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven enough ! 



100 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and 
Mahomet's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for 
us, there were many things to be said ; which it 
is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks 
5 only I shall make, and therewith leave it to your 
candour. The first is furnished me by Goethe ; it 
is a casual hint of his which seems well worth tak- 
ing note of. In one of his Delineations, in Meister's 
Travels it is, the hero comes-upon a Society of men 

10 with very strange ways, one of which was this : 
" We require," says the Master, " that each of our 
people shall restrict himself in one direction," shall 
go right against his desire in one matter, and make 
himself do the thing he does not wish, " should we 

15 allow him the greater latitude on all other sides." 
There seems to me a great justness in this. Enjoy- 
ing things which are pleasant ; that is not the evil : 
it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by 
them that is. Let a man assert withal that he is 

20 king over his habitudes ; that he could and would 
shake them off, on cause shown : this is an excellent 
law. The Month Eamadhan for the Moslem, much 
in Mahomet's Religion, much in his own Life, bears 
in that direction ; if not by forethought, or clear 

25 purpose of moral improvement on his part, then by 

a certain healthy manful instinct, which is as good. 

But there is another thing to be said about the 

Mahometan Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, 

however gross and material they may be, they are 

30 an emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so 
well remembered elsewhere. That gross sensual 
Paradise of his ; that horrible flaming Hell ; the 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 101 

great enormous Day of Judgment lie perpetually 
insists on : what is all this but a rude shadow, in 
the rude Bedouin imagination, of that grand spirit- 
ual Fact, and Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for 
us too if we do not all know and feel : the Infinite 5 
Nature of Duty ? That man's actions here are of 
infinite moment to him, and never die or end at all ; 
that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high 
as Heaven, downwards low as Hell, and in his 
threescore years of Time holds an Eternity fear- lO 
fully and wonderfully hidden : all this had burnt 
itself, as in flame-characters, into the wild Arab 
soul. As in flame and lightning, it stands written 
there ; awful, unspeakable, ever present to him. 
With bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage 15 
sincerity, halt, articulating, not able to articulate, 
he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven 
and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you 
will, it is the first of all truths. It is venerable 
under all embodiments. What is the chief end of 20 
man here below ? Mahomet has answered this 
question, in a way that might put some of us to 
shame! He does not, like a Bentham, a Paley, 
take Right and Wrong, and calculate the profit and 
loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other ; 25 
and summing all up by addition and subtraction 
into a net result, ask you. Whether on the whole 
the Right does not preponderate considerably ? 
No ; it is not better to do the one than the other ; 
the one is to the other as life is to death, — as 30 
Heaven is to Hell. The one must in nowise be 
done, the other in nowise left undone. You shall 



102 LECTURES ON HEROES 

not measure them ; they are incommensurable : the 
one is death eternal to a man, the other is life eter- 
nal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss ; 
reducing this God's-world to a dead brute Steam- 
5 engine, the infinite celestial Soul of Man to a kind 
of Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, 
pleasures and pains on : — If you ask me which 
gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser 
view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I 

10 will answer, It is not Mahomet ! 

On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion 
of Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity ; has a gen- 
uine element of what is spiritually highest looking 
through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfec- 

15 tions. The Scandinavian God Wish, the god of all 
rude men, — this has been enlarged into a Heaven 
by Mahomet ; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred 
Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by 
valiant action, and a divine patience which is still 

20 more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, and a 
truly celestial element superadded to that. Call it 
not false ; look not at the falsehood of it, look at 
the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has 
been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part 

25 of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all 
things, it has been a religion heartily believed. 
These Arabs believe their religion, and. try to live 
by it ! No Christians, since the early ages, or only 
perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, 

30 have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslem do 
by theirs, — believing it wholly, fronting Time 
with it, and Eternity with it. This night the 



THE HERO AS PROPHET 103 

watchman on the streets of Cairo when he cries, 
" Who goes ? " will hear from the passenger, along 
with his answer, " There is no God but God." 
Allah aJcbar, Islam, sounds through the souls, and 
whole daily existence, of these dusky millions. '5 
Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among 
Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters ; — dis- 
placing what is worse, nothing that is better or 
good. 

To the Arab ISTation it was as a birth from dark- lo 
ness into light ; Arabia first became alive by 
means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming 
unnoticed i^its deserts since the creation of the 
world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them 
with a word they could believe : see, the unnoticed 15 
becomes world-notable, the small has grown world- 
great ; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at 
Granada on this hand, at Delhi on that ; — glanc- 
ing in valour and splendour and the light of genius, 
Arabia shines through long ages over a great sec- 20 
tion of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. 
The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-ele- 
vating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, 
the man Mahomet, and that one century, — is it 
not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world 25 
of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, 
the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven- 
high from Delhi to Granada ! I said, the Great 
Man was always as lightning out of Heaven ; the 
rest of men Avaited for him like fuel, and then they 30 
too would flame. 



LECTUEE III 

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEAKE 

[Tuesday, 12th May 1840] 

/ The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are 
productions of old ages ; not to be repeated in the 
new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of con- 
ception, which the progress of mere scientific know- 

5 ledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, 
a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, 
if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their 
fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the 
voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. 

10 We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, 
but also less questionable, character of Poet ; a char- 
acter which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic 
figure belonging to all ages ; whom all ages possess, 
when once he is produced, whom the newest age as 

15 the oldest may produce ; — and will produce, al- 
ways when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a 
Hero-soul ; in no age is it other than possible that 
he may be shaped into a Poet. 

^ Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in 

20 different times and places, do we give to Great 
Men ; according to varieties we note in them, ac- 

104 



THE HERO AS POET 105 

cording to the sphere in which they have displayed 
themselves ! We might give many more names, 
on this same principle. I will remark again, how- 
ever, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, 
that the different sphere constitutes the grand ori- 5 
gin of such distinction ; that the Hero can be Poet, 
Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according 
to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I 
confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that 
could not be all sorts of men. The Poet who could 10 
merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would 
never make a stanza worth much. He could not 
sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at 
least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him 
the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher ; 15 
— in one or the other degree, he could have been, 
he is all these. So too I cannot understand how a 
Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the 
fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that 
were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, 20 
poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his 
course of life and education led him thitherward. 
The grand fundamental character is that of Great 
Man ; that the man be great. Napoleon has words 
in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis 25 
Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men 
withal ; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity 
and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The 
great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye : there it lies ; 
no man whatever, in what province soever, can 30 
prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boc- 
caccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well : 



106 LECTURES ON HEROES 

one can easily believe it ; tliey had done things a 
little harder than these ! Burns, a gifted song- 
writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. 
Shakspeare, — one knows not what he could not 

5 have made, in the supreme degree. 

"1 True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature 
does not make all great men, more than all other 
men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude 
doubtless ; but infinitely more of circumstance ; and 

10 far oftenest it is the latter only that are looked to. 
But it is as with common men in the learning of 
trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capabil- 
ity of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; 
and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason : 

15 he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. 
And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a 
street-porter staggering under his load on spindle- 
shanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of 
a Samson handling a bit of cloth and small White- 

20 chapel needle, — it cannot be considered that apti- 
tude of Nature alone has been consulted here 
either ! — The Great Man also, to what shall he be 
bound apprentice ? Given your Hero, is he to be- 
come Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet ? It is 

25 an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation 
between the world and him! He will read the 
world and its laws ; the world with its laws will be 
there to be read. What the world, on this matter, 
shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most im- 

30 portant fact about the world. — 



\ 



Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose 



THE HEBO AS POET 107 

modern notions of them. In some old languages, 
again, the titles are synonymous ; Vates means both 
Prophet and Poet : and indeed at all times, Prophet 
and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of 
meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the 5 
same; in this most important respect especially, 
That they have penetrated both of them into the 
sacred mystery of the Universe ; what Goethe calls 
^ the open secret.' " Which is the great secret ? " 
asks one. — " The open secret," — open to all, seen 10 
by almost none ! That divine mystery, which lies 
everywhere in all Beings, ^the Divine Idea of the 
World, that which lies at the bottom of Appear- 
ance,' as Fichte styles it ; of which all Appearance, 
from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but 15 
especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is 
but the vesture, the embodiment that renders it 
visible. This divine mystery is in all times and in 
all places ; veritably is. In most times and places 
it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, defin- 20 
able always in one or the other dialect, as the real- 
ised Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, 
commonplace matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it 
were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put 
together ! It could do no good, at present, to speak 25 
much about this ; but it is a pity for every one of 
us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge 
of it. Eeally a most mournful pity ; — a failure to 
live at all, if we live otherwise ! 

But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine 30 
mystery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has 
penetrated into it ; is a man sent hither to make it 



lOB LECTtlBES ON HEROiJS 

more impressively known to us. That always is 
his message ; lie is to reveal that to us, — that 
sacred mystery which he more than others lives 
ever present with. While others forget it, he 
5 knows it ; — I might say, he has been driven to 
know it ; without consent asked of Jiim, he finds 
himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, 
here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief ; 
this man too could not help being a sincere man ! 

10 Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is 
for him a necessity of nature to live in the very 
fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with 
the Universe, though all -others were but toying 
with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of be- 

15 ing sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators 
in the ' open secret,' are one. 

UWith respect to their distinction again: The 
Vates Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred 
mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, 

20 Duty and Prohibition ; the Vates Poet on what the 
G-ermans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and 
the like. The one we may call a revealer of what 
we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But 
indeed these two provinces run into one another, 

25 and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his 
eye on what we are to love : how else shall he know 
what it is we are to do ? The highest Voice ever 
heard on this earth said withal, '^ Consider the lilies 
of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin : 

30 yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest 
deep of Beauty. ' The lilies of the field,' — dressed 



THE HEBO AS POET 109 

finer tlian earthly princes, springing-up there in the 
humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye looking-out oii 
you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty ! How 
could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, 
rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly 5 
Beauty ? In this point of view, too, a saying of 
Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have 
meaning : ' The Beautiful,' he intimates, ' is higher 
than the Good ; the Beautiful, includes in it the 
Good.' The true Beautiful ; which however, I have 10 
said somewhere, ^ differs from the false as Heaven 
does from Vauxhall ! ' So much for the distinction 
and identity of Poet and Prophet. — 
^ In ancient and also in modern periods we find 
a few Poets who are accounted perfect ; whom it 15 
were a kind of treason to find fault with. This is 
noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is 
only an illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there 
is no perfect Poet ! A vein of Poetry exists in the 
hearts of all men ; no man is made altogether of 20 
Poetry. We are all poets when we read a poem 
well. The ^ imagination that shudders at the Hell 
of Dante,' is not that the same faculty, weaker in 
degree, as Dante's own ? No one but Shakspeare 
can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of 25 
Hamlet as Shakspeare did : but every one models 
some kind of story out of it ; every one embodies it 
better or worse. We need not spend time in defin- 
ing. Where there is no specific difference, as be- 
tween round and square, all definition must be more 30 
or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more 
of the poetic element developed in him as to have 



110 LECTURES ON HEROES 

become noticeable, will be called Poet by Ms neigh- 
bours. World-Poets too, those whom we are to 
take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the 
same way. One who rises so far above the general 

5 level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem 

a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it 

is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All 

• Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal ; 

no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are 

10 very soon forgotten : but not the noblest Shak- 
speare or Homer of them can be remembered for- 
ever; — a day comes when he too is not ! 
ClL«N"evertheless, you will say, there must be a dif- 
lerence between true Poetry and true Speech not 

15 poetical : what is the difference ? On this point 
many things have been written, especially by late 
German Critics, some of which are not very intelli- 
gible at first. They say, for example, that the Poet 
has an infinitude in him ; communicates an Unend- 

20 liclikeit, a certain character of ' infinitude,' to what- 
soever he delineates. This, though not very precise, 
yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering : if 
well meditated, some meaning will gradually be 
found in it. For my own part, I find considerable 

25 meaning in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry 
being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. 
Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say 
this as soon as anything else : If your delineation be 
authentically musical, musical not in word only, but 

30 in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and ut- 
terances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it 
will be poetical ; if not, not. — Musical : how much 



THE HEEO AS POET 111 

lies in that ! A musical thought is one spoken by a 
mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of 
the thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely 
the melody that lies hidden in it ; the inward har- 
mony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it 5 
exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. 
All inmost things, we may say, are melodious; 
naturally utter themselves in Song. The meaning 
of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical 
words, can express the effect music has on us ? A lo 
kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which 
leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for 
moments gaze into that ! 

Qt ISTay all speech, even the commonest speech, has 
something of song in it : not a parish in the world 15 
but has its parish-accent; — the rhythm or tune to 
which the people there sing what they have to say ! 
Accent is a kind of chanting ; all men have accent 
of their own, — though they only notice that of 
others. Observe too how all passionate language 20 
does of itself become musical, — with a finer music 
than the mere accent ; the speech of a man even in 
zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep 
things are Song. It seems somehow the very cen- 
tral essence of us. Song ; as if all the rest were but 25 
wrap|)ages and hulls ! The primal element of us ; 
of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of 
Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feeling they had 
of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of 
all her voices and utterances was perfect music. 30 
Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The \ 
Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom. 



112 LECTURES ON HEROES 

it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's 
sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. 
See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart 
of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only 
5 reach it. 

^^ The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse 
of Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in 
comparison with the Vates Prophet; his function, 
and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. 

10 # J The Hero taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as 
Prophet ; then next the Hero taken only as Poet : 
does it not look as if our estimate of the Great 
Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminish- 
ing ? We take him first for a god, then for one god- 

15 inspired ; and now in the next stage of it, his most 
miraculous word gains from us only the recogni- 
tion that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man 
of genius, or suchlike ! — It looks so ; but I per- 
suade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we 

20 consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man 
still there is the same altogether peculiar admira- 
tion for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, 
that there at any time was. 
.'X» I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great 

25 Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, 
of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendour, 
Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising higher ; not 
altogether that our reverence for these qualities, 
as manifested in our like, is getting lower. This 

30 is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, 
the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last 
forever, does indeed in this the highest province 



THE HEllO AS POET 113 

of human things, as in all Provinces, make sad 
work ; and onr reverence for great men, all crippled, 
blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, 
hardly recognisable. Men worship the shows of 
great men 5 the most disbelieve that there is any 5 
reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, 
fatalest faith ; believing which, one would literally 
despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for 
example, at Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of 
artillery ; that is the show of liim : yet is he not 10 
obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed 
and Diademed of the world put together could not 
be ? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather 
round the Scottish rustic. Burns ; — a strange feel- 
ing dwelling in each that they never heard a man 15 
like this ; that, on the whole, this is the man ! In 
the secret heart of these people it still dimly re- 
veals itself, though there is no accredited way of 
uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his 
black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and strange 20 
words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity 
far beyond all others, incommensurable with all 
others. Do not we feel it so ? But now, were 
Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that 
sorrowful brood, cast-out of us, — as, by God's 25 
blessing, they shall one day be ; were faith in the 
shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by 
clear faith in the tilings, so that a man acted on the 
impulse of that only, and counted the other non- 
extant; what a new' livelier feeling towards this 30 
Burns were it ! 
^ Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have 



114 LECTURES ON HEROES 

we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may 
say beatified? Sliakspeare and Dante are Saints 
of Poetry ; really, if we will think of it, canonised^ 
so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The 
5 unguided instinct of the world, working across all 
these perverse impediments, has arrived at such 
result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. 
They dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude ; none 
equal, none second to them : in the general feeling 

10 of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory 
as of complete perfection, invests these two. They 
are canonised, though no Pope or Cardinals took 
hand in doing it ! Such, in spite of every pervert- 
ing influence, in the most unheroic times, is still 

15 our indestructible reverence for heroism. — We will 
look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the 
Poet Shakspeare : what little it is permitted us to 
say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange 
itself in that fashion. 

20 Many volumes have been written by way of com- 
mentary on Dante and his Book ; yet, on the whole, 
with no great result. His Biography is, as it were, 
irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wan- 
dering, sorrowstricken man, not much note was 

25 taken of him while he lived ; and the most of that 
has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. 
It is five centuries since he ceased writing and liv- 
ing here. After all commentaries, the Book itself 
is mainly what we know of him. The Book ; — 

30 and one might add that Portrait commonly at- 
tributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot 



THE HEBO AS POET 115 

help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. 
To me it is a most touching face ; perhaps of all 
faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, 
painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel 
wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, 5 
the known victory which is also deathless ; — sig- 
nificant of the whole history of Dante ! I think it is 
the mournfulest face that ever was painted from 
reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. 
There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, 10 
tenderness, gentle affection as of a child ; but all 
this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into 
abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft 
ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim- 
trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! 15 
Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful 
one : the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain 
of the thing that is eating-out his heart, — as if it 
were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he 
whom it had power to torture and strangle were 20 
greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, 
and lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the 
world. Affection all converted into indignation : 
an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, 
like that of a god ! The eye too, it looks-out as 25 
in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry. Why the 
world was of such a sort ? This is Dante : so he 
looks, this ' voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings 
us ' his mystic unfathomable song.' 

The little that we know of Dante's Life corre- 30 
spends well enough with this Portrait and this 
Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper class 



116 LECTURES ON HEROES 

of societjj in ttie year 1265. His education was 
the best then going ; much, school-divinity, Aristo- 
telean logic, some Latin classics, — no inconsider- 
able insight into certain provinces of things: and 

5 Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need 
not doubt, learned better than most all that was 
learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, 
and of great subtlety ; this best fruit of education 
he had contrived to realise from these scholastics. 

10 He knows accurately and well what lies close to 
him; but, in such a time, without printed books 
or free intercourse, he could not know well what 
was distant : the small clear light, most luminous 
for what is near, breaks itself into singular chiaro- 

15 scuro striking on what is far off. This was Dante's 
learning from the schools. In life, he had gone 
through the usual destinies ; been twice out cam- 
paigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been 
on embassy ; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural 

20 gradation of talent and service, become one of the 
Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in 
boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful 
little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up 
thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant 

25 intercourse with her. All readers know his grace- 
ful affecting account of this ; and then of their be- 
ing parted; of her being wedded to another, and 
of her death soon after. She makes a great figure 
in Dante's Poem; seems to have made a great 

30 figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as 
if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the 
dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with 



THE HEBO AS POET 117 

his whole strength of affection loved. She died: 
Dante himself was wedded ; but it seems not hap- 
pily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous ear- 
nest man, with his keen excit abilities, was not 
altogether easy to make happy. 6 

We will not complain of Dante's miseries : had 
all gone right with him as he wished it, he might 
have been Prior, Podesta, or whatsoever they call 
it, of Plorence, well accepted among neighbours, — 
and the world had wanted one of the most notable lo 
words ever spoken or sung. Florence would have 
had another prosperous Lord Mayor ; and the ten 
dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten 
other listening centuries (for there will be ten of 
them and more) had no Divina Commedia to hear ! 15 
We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny 
was appointed for this Dante; and he, struggling 
like a man led towards death and crucifixion, could 
not help fulfilling it. Give him the choice of his 
happiness ! He knew not, more than we do, what 20 
was really happy, what was really miserable. 

In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bi- 
anchi-Neri, or some other confused disturbances 
rose to such a height, that Dante, whose party had 
seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast un- 25 
expectedly forth into banishment ; doomed thence- 
forth to a life of woe and wandering. His property 
was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest 
feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the 
sight of God and man. He tried what was in him 30 
to get reinstated ; tried even by warlike surprisal, 
with arms in his hand : but it would not do ; bad 



118 LECTURES ON HEROES 

only had become worse. There is a record, I be- 
lieve, still extant in the Florence Archives, doom- 
ing this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt 
alive. Burnt alive ; so it stands, they say : a very 

5 curious civic document. Another curious docu- 
ment, some considerable number of years later, is 
a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates, 
written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, 
that he should return on condition of apologising 

10 and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern 
pride : " If I cannot return without calling myself 
guilty, I will never return, nunquam revertar.^^ 

For Dante there was now no home in this world. 
He wandered from patron to patron, from place to 

15 place ; proving, in his own bitter words, ' How hard 
is the path. Come d duro called The wretched are 
not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, 
with his proud earnest nature, with his moody hu- 
mours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch 

20 reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, 
and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, 
he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala 
stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons 
(nebulones ac histriones) making him heartily merry ; 

25 when turning to Dante, he said : " Is it not strange, 
now, that this poor fool should make himself so 
entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day 
after day, and have nothing to amuse us with at 
all ? " Dante answered bitterly : " No, not strange ; 

30 your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, Like to 
Like;" — given the amuser, the amusee must also 
be given! Such a man, with his proud silent ways, 



THE HERO AS POET 119 

with. Ms sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to 
succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evi- 
dent to him that he had no longer any resting-place, 
or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly 
world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no 5 
living heart to love him now ; for his sore miseries 
there was no solace here. 

The deeper naturally would the Eternal World 
impress itself on him; that awful reality over 
which, after all, this Time-world, with, its Florences 10 
and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. 
Florence thou shalt never see : but Hell and Pur- 
gatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see ! Wliat 
is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and 
Life altogether ? Eternity : thither, of a truth, 15 
not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound ! 
The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made 
its home more and more in that awful other world. 
Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the 
one fact important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it 20 
is the one fact important for all men : — but to 
Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty 
of scientific shape; he no more doubted of that 
Maleholge Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy 
circles, with its alti guai, and that he himself should 25 
see it, than we doubt that we should see Constan- 
tinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled 
with this, brooding over it in speechless thought 
and awe, bursts forth at length into ' mystic unfath- 
omable song ' ; and this his Divine Comedy, the most 30 
remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. 

It must have been a great 'solacement to Dante, 



120 LECTURES ON HEROES 

and was, as we can see, a proud tliougM for Mm at 
times. That lie, here in exile, could do this work ; 
that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder 
him from doing it, or even much help him in doing 
5 it. He knew too, partly, that it was great; the 
greatest a man could do. ' If thou follow thy star, 
Se tu segui tua steUa/ — so could the Hero, in his 
forsakenness, in his extreme need, still say to him- 
self : " Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of 

10 a glorious haven ! " The labour of writing, we find, 
and indeed could know otherwise, was great and 
painful for him ; he says, This Book, ' which has 
made me lean for many years.' Ah yes, it was 
won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, — not in 

15 sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed 
most good Books are, has been written, in many 
senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole his- 
tory, this Book. He died after finishing it; not 
yet very old, at the age of fifty-six; — broken- 

20 hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his 
death-city Eavenna: Hie claudor Dantes patriis 
extorris ah oris. The Florentines begged back his 
body, in a century after; the Ravenna people 
would not give it. ''Here am I Dante laid, shut- 

25 out from my native shores." 

I said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck 
who calls it ' a mystic unfathomable Song ' ; and 
such is literally the character of it. Coleridge re- 
marks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever 

30 you find a sentence musically worded, of true 
rhythm and melody in the words, there is some- 
thing deep and good in the meaning too. For body 



THE HERO AS POET 121 

and soul, word and idea, go strangely together here 
as everywhere. Song: we said before, it was the 
Heroic of Speech. ! All old Poems, Homer's and 
the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in 
strictness, that all right Poems are;, that whatso- 5 
ever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece 
of Prose cramped into jingling lines, — to the great 
injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the 
reader, for most part ! What we want to get at is 
the thought the man had, if he had any : why 10 
should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it 
out plainly ? It is only when the heart of him is 
rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones 
of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become 
musical by the greatness, depth and music of his 15 
thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and 
sing ; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as 
the Heroic of Speakers, — whose . speech is Song. 
Pretenders to this are many ; and to an earnest 
reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melan- 20 
choly, not to say an insupportable business, that 
of reading rhyme ! Bhyme that had no inward 
necessity to be rhymed ; — it ought to have told us 
plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. 
I would advise all men who can speak their thought, 25 
not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious 
time, among serious men, there is no vocation in 
them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true 
song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, 
so shall we hate the false song, and account it a 30 
mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, al- 
together an insincere and offensive thing. 



122 LECTURES ON HEROES 

I give Dante my higliest praise when I say of his 
Divine Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely 
a Song. In the very sound of it there is a canto 
fermo; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, 
5 his simple terza rima, doubtless helped him in this. 
One reads along naturally with a sort of lilt. But 
I add, that it could not be otherwise ; for the essence 
and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. 
Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it 

10 musical ; — go deep enough, there is music every- 
where. A true inward symmetry, what one calls 
an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportion- 
ates it all : architectural ; which also partakes of 
the character of music. The three kingdoms, In- 

15 ferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, look-out on one another 
like compartments of a great edifice; a great su- 
pernatural world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern, 
solemn, awful ; Dante's World of Souls ! It is, at 
bottom, the sincerest of all Poems ; sincerity, here 

20 too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came 
deep out of the author's heart of hearts ; and it goes 
deep, and through long generations, into ours. The 
people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, 
used to say, " JSccovi V uom cV ^ stato alV Inferno, 

25 See, there is the man that was in Hell ! " Ah yes, 
he had been in Hell; — in Hell enough, in long 
severe sorrow and struggle ; as the like of him is 
pretty sure to have been. Commedias that come- 
out divine are not accomplished otherwise. Thought, 

30 true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it 
not the daughter of Pain ? Born as out of the 
black whirlwind ; — true effort, in fact, as of a 



THE HEBO AS POET 123 

captive struggling to free himself : tliat is Thought. 
In all ways we are ' to become perfect through suf- 
fering J — But, as I say, no work known to me is so 
elaborated as this of Dante's. It has all been as 
if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It 5 
had made him ^ lean ' for many years. Not the 
general whole only; every compartment of it is 
worked-out, with intense earnestness, into truth, 
into clear visuality. Each answers to the other; 
each fits in its place, like a marble stone accurately 10 
hewn and polished. It is the soul of Dante, and 
in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered for- 
ever rhythmically visible there. No light task ; a 
right intense one : but a task which is done. 

Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much 15 
that depends on it, is the prevailing character of 
Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as 
a large catholic mind ; rather as a narrow, and even 
sectarian mind : it is partly the fruit of his age and 
position, but partly too of his own nature. His 20 
greatness has, in all senses, concentered itself into 
fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not 
because he is world-wide, but because he is world- 
deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were 
down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so 25 
intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin 
with the outermost development of his intensity, 
consider how he paints. He has a great power of 
vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents 
that and nothing more. You remember that first 30 
view he gets of the Hall of Dite : red pinnacle, red- 
hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity 



124 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

of gloom ; — so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and 
forever ! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of 
Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in 
him : Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed ; and 
5 then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, 
spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and 
then there is silence, nothing more said. His 
silence is more eloquent than words. It is strange 
with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the 

10 true likeness of a matter : cuts into the matter as 
with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, 
collapses at Virgil's rebuke ; it is ' as the sails sink, 
the mast being suddenly broken.' Or that poor 
Brunetto Latini, with the cotto aspetto, ' face hdked,'' 

15 parched brown and lean ; and the ' fiery snow ' that 
falls on them there, a 'fiery snow without wind,' 
slow, deliberate, never-ending ! Or the lids of those 
Tombs ; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim- 
burning Hall, each with its Soul in torment ; the 

20 lids laid open there ; they are to be shut at the Day 
of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata 
rises ; and how Cavalcante falls — at hearing of his 
Son, and the past tense ^fue^ ! The very move- 
ments in Dante have something brief; swift, de- 

25 cisive, almost military. It is of the inmost essence 
of his genius this sort of painting. The fiery, swift 
Italian nature of the man, so silent, passionate, 
with its quick abrupt movements, its silent 'pale 
rages,' speaks itself in these things. 

30 For though this of painting is one of the outer- 
most developments of a man, it comes like all else 
from the essential faculty of him; it is physiog- 



TRl! HERO AS POST 125 

nomical of the whole man. Eind a man whose 
words paint you a likeness, you have found a man 
worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as 
very characteristic of him. In the first place, he 
could not have discerned the object at all, or seen 5 
the vital type of it, unless he had, what we may 
call, sympathised with it, — had sympathy in him 
to bestow on objects. He must have been sincere 
about it too ; sincere and sympathetic : a man with- 
out worth cannot give you the likeness of any ob- lo 
ject ; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and 
trivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may 
we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself 
in this power of discerning what an object is ? 
Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will 15 
come out here. Is it even of business, a matter to 
be done ? The gifted man is he who sees the essen- 
tial point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage : 
it is his faculty too, the man of businesses faculty, 
that he discern the true likeness, not the false super- 20 
ficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. And 
how much of morality is in the kind of insight we 
get of anything ; ' the eye seeing in all things what 
it brought with it the faculty of seeing ' ! To the 
mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the 25 
jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters 
tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. 
No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of 
any object. In the commonest human face there 
lies more than Raphael will take-away with him. 30 

Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, 
and of a vividness as of fire in dark night ; taken 



126 LECTURES ON HEROES 

on the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the 
outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, 
what qualities in that ! A thing woven as out of 
rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small 
5 flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our 
very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it 
too : della hella persona, che mi fa tolta ; and how, 
even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will 
never part from her ! Saddest tragedy in these 

10 alti guai. And the racking winds, in that aer bruno, 
whirl them away again, to wail forever ! — Strange 
to think : Dante was the friend of this poor Fran- 
cesca's father ; Francesca herself may have sat upon 
the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. 

15 Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law : it is so 
Nature is made ; it is so Dante discerned that she 
was made. What a paltry notion is that of his 
Divine Comedy's being a poor splenetic impotent 
terrestrial libel ; putting those into Hell whom he 

20 could not be avenged-upon on earth! I suppose 
if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart 
of any man, it was in Dante's But a man who does 
not know rigour cannot pity either. His very pity 
will be cowardly, egoistic, — sentimentality, or little 

25 better. I know not in the world an affection equal 
to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, 
longing, pitying love : like the wail of ^olian harps, 
soft, soft ; like a child's young heart ; — and then that 
stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his 

30 towards his Beatrice ; their meeting together in the 
Paradiso ; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, 
her that had been purified by death so long, sepa- 



THE HEBO AS POET 127 

rated from him so far : — one likens it to the song 
of angels ; it is among the purest utterances of 
affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came 
out of a human soul. 

For the intense Dante is intense in all things ; he 5 
has got into the essence of all. His intellectual in- 
sight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the 
result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, 
above all, we must call him ; it is the beginning of 
all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his 10 
love ; — as indeed, what are they but the inverse or 
converse of his love ? ' A Dio spiacenti ed a' nemici 
sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God : ' 
lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and 
aversion ; ' Non ragionam di lor, We will not speak 15 
of them, look only and pass.' Or think of this; 
' They have not the hope to die, JSfon han speranza di 
morte.'' One day, it had risen sternly benign on the 
scathed heart of Dante, that he, wretched, never- 
resting, worn as he was, would full surely die; 'that 20 
Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.' 
Such words are in this man. For rigour, earnest- 
ness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the 
modern world ; to seek his parallel we must go into 
the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique Prophets 25 
there. 

I do not agree with much modern criticism, in 
greatly preferring the Inferno to the two other 
parts of the Divine Commedia. Such preference 
belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of 30 
taste, and is like to be a transient feeling. The 
Purgatorio and Paradiso, especially the former, one 



128 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

would almost say, is even more excellent than it. 
It is a noble thing that Purgatorio, 'Mountain of 
Purification ' ; an emblem of the noblest conception 
of that age. If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must 
5 be so rigorous, awful, yet in Eepentance too is man 
purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. 
It is beautiful how Dante works it out. The tremo- 
lar dell ' ondej that ' trembling ' of the ocean-waves, 
under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning 

10 afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an 
altered mood. Hope has now dawned ; never-dying 
Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The 
obscure sojourn of daemons and reprobate is under- 
foot ; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher 

15 and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. " Pray 
for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say 
to him. " Tell my Giovanna to pray for me," my 
daughter Giovanna ; " I think her mother loves me 
no more ! " They toil painfully up by that winding 

20 steep, ' bent-down like corbels of a building,' some 
of them, — crushed-together so ' for the sin of pride ' ; 
yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they 
shall have reached the top, which is Heaven's gate, 
and by Mercy shall have been admitted in. The 

25 joy too of all, when one has prevailed ; the whole 
Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise 
rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and 
got its sin and misery left behind ! I call all this a 
noble embodiment of a true noble thought. -X;> 

30 But indeed the Three compartments mutally sup- 
port one another, are indispensable to one another. 
The Paradiso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, 



THE HERO AS POET 129 

is the redeeming side of the Inferno; the Inferno 
without it were untrue. All three make-up the 
true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity 
of the Middle Ages; a thing forever memorable, 
forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It 5 
was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such 
depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ; a man sent 
to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable 
with what brief simplicity he passes out of the 
every-day reality, into the Invisible one; and in 10 
the second or third stanza, we find ourselves in the 
World of Spirits ; and dwell there, as among things 
palpable, indubitable ! To Dante they were so ; the 
real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the 
threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. 15 
At bottom, the one was as preie?'natural as the 
other. Has not each man a soul? He will not 
only be a spirit, but is one. To the earnest Dante 
it is all one visible Fact ; he believes it, sees it ; is 
the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say 20 
again, is the saving merit, now as always. 

Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol 
withal, an emblematic representation of his Belief 
about this Universe : — some Critic in a future age, 
like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who 25 
has ceased altogether to think as Dante did, may 
find this too all an 'Allegory,' perhaps an idle 
Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sub- 
limest, of the soul of Christianity. It expresses, 
as in huge worldwide architectual emblems, how 30 
the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to be the 
two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all 

K 



130 LECTURES ON HEROES 

turns ; that these two differ not by preferability of 
one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute 
and infinite ; that the one is excellent and high as 
light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as 
5 Gehenna and the Pit of Hell ! Everlasting Justice, 
yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity, — all 
Chris tianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, 
is emblemed here. Emblemed : and yet, as I urged 
the other day, with what entire truth of purpose ; 

10 how unconscious of any embleming ! Hell, Purga- 
tory, Paradise : these things were not fashioned as 
emblems; was there, in our Modern European Mind, 
any thought at all of their being emblems ! Were 
they not indubitable awful facts ; the whole heart 

15 of man taking them for practically true, all Nature 
everywhere confirming them? So is it always in 
these things. Men do not believe an Allegory. 
The future Critic, whatever his new thought may 
be, who considers this of Dante to have been all 

20 got-up as an Allegory, will commit one sore mis- 
take ! — Paganism we recognised as a veracious ex- 
pression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man 
towards the Universe ; veracious, true once, and 
still not without worth for us. But mark here the 

25 difference of Paganism and Christianism ; one great 
difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Oper- 
ations of Nature ; the destinies, efforts, combina- 
tions, vicissitudes of things and men in this world ; 
Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, 

30 the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous 
nature : a rude helpless utterance of the first 
Thought of men, — the chief recognised virtue Cour- 



THE HERO AS POET 131 

age, Superiority to Fear. The other was not for 
the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a 
progress is here, if in that one respect only ! — 

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent 
centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. 5 
The IJivma Commedia is of Dante's writing ; yet 
in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only 
the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The 
craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, 
with these tools, with these cunning methods, — lo 
how little of all he does is properly Jiis work ! All 
past inventive men work there with him ; — as 
indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the 
spokesman of the Middle Ages ; the Thought they 
lived by stands here, in everlasting music. These 15 
sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the 
fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good 
men who had gone before him. Precious they; 
but also is not he precious ? Much, had not he 
spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet 20 
living voiceless. 

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic 
Song, at once of one of the greatest human souls, 
and of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto 
realised for itself ? Christianism, as Dante sings 25 
it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse 
mind ; another than ' Bastard Christianism ' half- 
articulately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-hun- 
dred years before ! — The noblest idea made real 
hitherto among men, is sung, and emblemed-forth 30 
abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the one 



132 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

sense and in the other, are we not right glad to 
possess it ? As I calculate, it may last yet for long 
thousands of years. For the thing that is uttered 
from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs al- 
5 together from what is uttered by the outer part. 
The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode ; 
the outer passes away, in swift endless changes; 
the inmost is the same yesterday, today and for- 
ever. True souls, in all generations of the world, 

10 who look on this Dante, will find a brotherhood in 
him ; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes 
and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity ; 
they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. 
Napoleon in Saint-Helena is charmed with the 

15 genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew 
Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from 
ours, does yet, because he speaks from the heart of 
man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole 
secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for 

20 depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too ; 
his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. 
One need not wonder if it were predicted that his 
Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe 
has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly 

25 spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass 
and stone, and outer arrangement never so lasting, 
are brief in comparison to an unfathomable heart- 
song like this : one feels as if it might survive, still 
of importance to men, when these had all sunk into 

30 new irrecognisable combinations, and had ceased 
individually to be. Europe has made much^ great 
cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies 



THE HEBO AS POET 133 

of opinion and practice : but it has made little of 
the class of Dante's Thought. Homer yet is, veri- 
tably present face to face with every open soul of 
us; and Greece, where is it? Desolate for thou- 
sands of years ; away, vanished ; a bewildered heap 5 
of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it 
all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King 
Agamemnon ! Greece was ; Greece, except in the 
loords it spoke, is not. 

The uses of this Dante ? We will not say much 10 
about his ' uses.' A human soul who has once got 
into that primal element of Song, and sung-forth 
fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the depths 
of our existence ; feeding through long times the lif e- 
roots of all excellent human things whatsoever, — is 
in a way that 'utilities' will not succeed well in 
calculating ! We will not estimate the Sun by the 
quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be 
invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may 
make : the contrast in this respect between the 20 
Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred 
years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at 
Granada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to 
be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, 
then, Dante's effect on the world was small in com- 25 
parison? Not so : his arena is far more restricted; 
but also it is far nobler, clearer ; — perhaps not less 
but more important. Mahomet speaks to great 
masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to 
such ; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, crudi- 30 
ties, follies : on the great masses alone can he act, 
and there with good and with evil strangely blended. 



134 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Dante speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in 
all times and places. Neither does he grow ob- 
solete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure 
star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the 
5 great and the high of all ages kindle themselves : 
he is the possession of all the chosen of the world 
for uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may 
long survive Mahomet. In this way the balance 
may be made straight again. 

10 But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their 
effect on the world by what we can judge of their 
effect there, that a man and his work are measured. 
Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man do his 
work ; the fruit of it is the care of Another than 

15 he. It will grow its own fruit ; and whether em- 
bodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian Conquests, 
so that it 'fills all Morning and Evening News- 
papers,' and all Histories, which are a kind of dis- 
tilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all; — 

20 what matters that ? That is not the real fruit of 
it ! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did 
something, was something. If the great Cause of 
Man, and Man's work in God's Earth, got no 
furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no 

25 matter how many scimetars he drew^, how many 
gold piasters pocketed, and what uproar and blar- 
ing he made in this world, — he was but a loud- 
sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he tvas 
not at all. Let us honour the great empire of aS'*- 

30 lence, once more! The boundless treasury which 
we do 710^ jingle in our pockets, or count up and 
present before men ! It is perhaps, of all things. 



THE HERO AS POET 135 

tlie usefulest for each, of us to do, in these loud 
times. 

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our 
world to embody musically the E/Cligion of tlie 
Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, 5 
its Inner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, em- 
bodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as 
developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, 
ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, 
looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer lo 
we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shak- 
speare and Dante, after thousands of years, what 
our modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, 
will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith 
or soul ; Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has 15 
given us the Practice or body. This latter also we 
were to have; a man was sent for it, the man 
Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life 
had reached its last finish, and was on the point 
of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, 20 
as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign 
Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial sing- 
ing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long- 
enduring record of it. Two fit men : Dante, deep, 
fierce as the central fire of the world ; Shakspeare, 25 
wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light 
of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice ; 
we English had the honour of producing the other. 

Curious enough how, as it were by mere acci- 
dent, this man came to us. I think always, so great, 30 
quiet, complete and self-suj[ficing is this Shakspeare, 



136 LECTURES ON HEROES 

had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him 
for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never lieard of 
him as a Poet ! The woods and skies, the rustic 
Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough 
5 for this man ! But indeed that strange outbudding 
of our whole English Existence, which we call the 
Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own 
accord ? The ' Tree Igdrasil ' buds and withers by 
its own laws, — too deep for our scanning. Yet it 
10 does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of 
it is there, by fixed eternal laws ; not a Sir Thomas 
Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, 
I say, and not sufBiciently considered : how every- 
thing does cooperate with all ; not a leaf rotting on 
15 the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and 
stellar systems ; no thought, word or act of man 
but has sprung withal out of all men, and works 
sooner or later, recognisably or irrecognisably, on 
all men ! It is all a Tree : circulation of sap and 
20 influences, mutual communication of every minutest 
leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every 
other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. 
The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the 
Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs 
25 overspread the highest Heaven ! — 

In some sense it may be said that this glorious- 
Elizabethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the out- 
come and flowerage of all which had preceded it, 
is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Mid- 
30 die Ages. The Christian Eaith, which was the 
theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical 
Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion 



THE HERO AS POET 137 

then, as it now and always is, was tlie soul of Prac- 
tice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And 
remark here, as rather curious, that Middle- Age 
Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Par- 
liament could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the 5 
noblest product of it, made his appearance. He 
did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at 
her own time, with Catholicism or what else might 
be necessary, sent him forth ; taking small thought 
of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys, Queen-Eliza- lo 
beths go their way ; and ISTature too goes hers. 
Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, not- 
withstanding the noise they make. What Act of 
Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hust- 
ings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shak- 15 
speare into being? No dining at Freemason's 
Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, 
and infinite other jangling and true or false en- 
deavouring ! This Elizabethan Era, and all its 
nobleness and blessedness, came without proclama- 20 
tion, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare 
was the free gift of Nature ; given altogether 
silently ; — received altogether silently, as if it had 
been a thing of little account. And yet, very liter- 
ally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at 25 
that side of matters too. 

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion 
one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed 
is, in fact, the right one ; I think the best judg- 
ment not of this country only, but of Europe at 30 
large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That 
Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto ; the 



138 LECTURES ON HEROES 

greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has 
left record of himself in the way of Literature. 
On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, 
such a faculty of thought, if we take all the charac- 
5 ters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of 
depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged 
in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in 
a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, 
that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas 

10 there is, apart from all other ' faculties ' as they are 
called, an understanding manifested, equal to that 
in Bacon's Novum Organum. That is true; and 
it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would 
become more apparent if we tried, any of us for 

15 himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic mate- 
rials, we could fashion such a result! The built 
house seems all so fit, — everyway as it should be, 
as if it came there by its own law and the nature 
of things, — we forget the rude disorderly quarry 

20 it was shaped from. The very perfection of the 
house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the 
builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any 
other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he 
discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he 

25 works under, what his materials are, what his own 
force and its relation to them is. It is not a transi- 
tory glance of insight that will suffice ; it is delib- 
erate illumination of the whole matter; it is a 
calmly seeing eye ; a great intellect, in short. How 

30 a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, 
will construct a narrative, what kind of picture 
and delineation he will give of it, — is the best 



THE HEBO AS POET 139 

measure you could get of wliat intellect is in the 
man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand 
prominent ; which unessential, fit to be suppressed ; 
where is the true heginning, the true sequence and 
ending ? To find out this, you task the whole force 5 
of insight that is in the man. He must understand 
the thing; according to the depth of his under- 
standing, will the fitness of his answer be. You 
will try him so. Does like join itself to like ; does 
the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that lo 
its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, 
Fiat lux, Let there be light ; and out of chaos make 
a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, 
will he accomplish this. 

Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I 15 
called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and 
things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is great. 
All the greatness of the man comes out decisively 
here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative 
perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at 20 
reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost 
heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in 
light before him, so that he discerns the perfect 
structure of it. Creative, we said : poetic creation, 
what is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently ? 25 
The word that will describe the thing, follows of 
itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. 
And is not Shakspeare' s morality, his valour, can- 
dour, tolerance, truthfulness ; his whole victorious 
strength and greatness, which can triumph over so 
such obstructions, visible there too ? Great as the 
world! No twisted, poor convex-concave mirror. 



140 LECTtiBEs oist s:b:boes 

reflecting all objects with, its own convexities and 
concavities ; a perfectly level mirror ; — that is to 
say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly 
related to all things and men, a good man. It is 
5 truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in 
all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, 
a Juliet, a Coriolanus ; sets them all forth to us in 
their round completeness ; loving, just, the equal 
brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intel- 

10 lect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary 
order; earthly, material, poor in comparison with 
this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, 
almost nothing of the same rank. Groethe alone, 
since the days of Shakspeare, reminds' me of it. 

15 Of him too you say that he saw the object; you 
may say what he himself says of Shakspeare : 
'His characters are like watches with dial-plates 
' of transparent crystal ; they show you the hour 
'like others, and the inward mechanism also is 

20 ' all visible.' 

The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the 
inner harmony of things ; what Nature meant, 
what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these 
often rough, embodiments. Something she did 

25 mean. To the seeing eye that something were 
discernible. Are they base, miserable things ? 
You can laugh over them, you can weep over them ; 
you can in some way or other genially relate your- 
self to them ; — you can, at lowest, hold your peace 

30 about them, turn away your own and others' face 
from them, till the hour come for practically ex- 
terminating and extinguishing them ! At bottom. 



THE HERO AS POET 141 

it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he 
have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he 
have : a Poet in word ; or failing that, perhaps 
still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at 
all ; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will 5 
depend on accidents : who knows on what ex- 
tremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having 
had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing 
in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables 
him to discern the inner heart of things, and the 10 
harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists 
has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not 
hold together and exist), is not the result of habits 
or accidents, but the gift of Mature herself ; the 
primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort so- 15 
ever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first 
of all. See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use 
to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensi- 
bilities against each other, and name yourself a 
Poet ; there is no hope for you. If you can, there 20 
is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all 
manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster 
used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 
" But are ye sure he's not a dunce 9 " Why, really 
one might ask the same thing, in regard to every 25 
man proposed for whatsoever function ; and con- 
sider it as the one inquiry needful : Are ye sure 
he's not a dunce ? There is, in this world, no 
other entirely fatal person, 

Por, in fact, I say the degree of vision that 30 
dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. 
If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should 



142 LECTURES ON HEROES 

say superiority of Intellect, and think I had in- 
cluded all under that. What indeed are faculties ? 
We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things 
separable ; as if a man had intellect, imagination, 
5 fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That 
is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 
^ intellectual nature,' and of his ' moral nature,' as 
if these again were divisible, and existed apart. 
Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such 

10 forms of utterance ; we must speak, I am aware, in 
that way, if we are to speak at all. But words 
ought not to harden into things for us. It seems 
to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most 
part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to 

15 know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that 
these divisions are at bottom but names; that man's 
spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in 
him, is essentially one and indivisible ; that what 
we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so 

20 forth, are but different figures of the same Power 
of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each 
other, physiognomically related ; that if we knew 
one of them, we might know all of them. Morality 
itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, 

25 what is this but another side of the one vital Force 
whereby he is and works ? All that a man does is 
physiognomical of him. You may see how a man 
would fight, by the way in which he sings ; his cour- 
age, or want of courage, is visible in the word he 

30 utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in 
the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the 
same Self abroad in all these ways. 



THE HERO AS POET 143 

Without hands a man might have feet, and could 
still walk : but, consider it, — without morality, 
intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly 
immoral man could not know anything at all ! To 
know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man 5 
must first love the thing, sympathise with it : that is, 
be virtuously related to it. If he have not the jus- 
tice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, 
the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every 
turn, how shall he know ? His virtues, all of them, 10 
will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with 
her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the 
pusillanimous forever a sealed book : what such 
can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small ; 
for the uses of the day merely. — But does not the 15 
very Fox know something of Nature ? Exactly so : 
it knows where the geese lodge ! The human Rey- 
nard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what 
more does he know but this and the like of this ? 
Nay, it should be considered too, that if the Fox 20 
had not a certain vulpine morality, he could not 
even know where the geese were, or get at the 
geese ! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar 
reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by 
Nature, Fortune and other Foxes and so forth ; 25 
and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and 
other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would 
catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that 
his morality and insight are of the same dimen- 
sions ; different faces of the same internal unity of 30 
vulpine life ! — These things are worth stating ; 
for the contrary of them acts with manifold very 



144 LECTURES ON HEUOES 

baleful perversion, in this time : what limitations, 
modifications they require, your own candour will 
supply. 

If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the 
5 greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning 
him. But there is more in Shakspeare' s intellect 
than we have yet seen. It is what I call an uncon- 
scious intellect ; there is more virtue in it than he 
himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks 

10 of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of 
Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great 
truth in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not Arti- 
fice ; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or 
precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of 

15 Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a 
voice of Nature. The latest generations of men 
will find new meanings in Shakspeare, new elucida- 
tions of their own human being ; ' new harmonies 
^ with the infinite structure of the Universe ; con- 

20 * currences with later ideas, affinities with the 
' higher powers and senses of man.' This well de- 
serves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward 
to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a 
part of herself. Such a man's works, whatsoever he 

25 with utmost conscious exertion and forethought 
shall- accomplish, grow up withal ^^consciously, 
from the unknown deeps in him ; — as the oak-tree 
grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains 
and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry 

30 grounded on Nature's own laws, conformable to all 
Truth whatsoever. How much in Shakspeare lies 
hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to 



THE HEBO AS POET 145 

himself ; much, that was not known at all, not 
speakable at all: like roots, like sap and forces 
working underground ! Speech, is great ; but 
Silence is greater. 

Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is 5 
notable. I will not blame Dante for his misery : 
it is as battle without victory ; but true battle, — 
the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shak- 
speare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, 
and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own lo 
sorrows : those Sonnets of his will even testify ex- 
pressly in what deep waters he had waded, and 
swum struggling for his life ; — as what man like 
him ever failed to have to do ? It seems to me a 
heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a 15 
bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and off- 
hand, never knowing the troubles of other men. 
Not so ; with no man is it so. How could a man 
travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such 
tragedy- writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the 20 
way ? Or, still better, how could a man delineate 
a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffer- 
ing heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never 
suffered ? — And now, in contrast with all this, 
observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing 25 
love of laughter ! You would say, in no point does 
he exaggerate but only in laughter. Fiery objurga- 
tions, words that pierce and burn, are to be found 
in Shakspeare ; yet he is always in measure here ; 
never what Johnson would remark as a specially 30 
^ good hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from 
him in floods ; he heaps all manner of ridiculous 



146 LECTURES ON HEROES 

nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and 
tosses Mm in all sorts of horse-play ; you would 
say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if 
not always the finest, it is always a genial laugh- 
5 ter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty ; 
never. No man who can laugh, what we call 
laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some 
poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the 
credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sym- 

10 pathy ; good laughter is not ' the crackling of 
thorns under the pot.' Even at stupidity and pre- 
tension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise 
than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very 
hearts ; and we dismiss them covered with explo- 

15 sions of laughter : but we like the poor fellows only 
the better for our laughing ; and hope they will get 
on well there, and continue Presidents of the City- 
watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep 
sea, is very beautiful to me. 

20 We have no room to speak of Shakspeare' s indi- 
vidual works ; though perhaps there is much still 
waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for in- 
stance, all his plays reviewed as Hamlet, in Wilhelm 
Meister, is ! A thing which might, one day, be 

25 done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on 
his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, 
which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind 
of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, 
said, he knew no English History but what he had 

30 learned from Shakspeare. There are really, if we 
look to it, few as memorable Histories. The great 



THE HERO AS POET 147 

salient points are admirably seized ; all rounds it- 
self off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence ; it is, 
as Schlegel says, epic ; — as indeed all delineation 
by a great thinker will be. There are right beau- 
tiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together 5 
form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt 
strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its 
sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The de- 
scription of the two hosts : the wornout, jaded Eng- 
lish; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the lo 
battle shall begin ; and then that deathless valour : 
" Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in Eng- 
land ! " There is a noble Patriotism in it, — far 
other than the 'indifference' you sometimes hear 
ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart 15 
breathes, calm and strong, through the whole busi- 
ness ; not boisterous, protrusive ; all the better for 
that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. 
This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come 
to that ! 20 

But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, 
that we have no full impress of him there ; even as 
full as we have of many men. His works are so 
many windows, through which we see a glimpse of 
the world that was in him. All his works seem, 25 
comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written 
under cramping circumstances; giving only here 
and there a note of the full utterance of the man. 
Passages there are that come upon you like splen- 
dour out of Heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating 30 
the very heart of the thing : you say, " That is true, 
spoken once and forever ; wheresoever and whenso- 



148 LECTURES ON HEROES 

ever there is an. open human soul, that will be recog- 
nised as true ! " Such bursts, however, make us feel 
that the surrounding matter is not radiant ; that it 
is, in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shak- 

6 speare had to write for the Globe Playhouse : his 
great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that 
and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it 
is with us all. No man works save under conditions. 
The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before 

10 us ; but his Thought as he could translate it into 
the stone that was given, with the tools that were 
given. Disjecta membra are all that we find of any 
Poet, or of any man. 

Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare 

15 may recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; 
of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he 
took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to 
this man also divine ; itnspeakable, deep as Tophet, 
high as Heaven : ' We are such stuff as Dreams are 

20 made of ! ' That scroll in Westminster Abbey, 
which few read with understanding, is of the depth 
of any seer. But the man sang ; did not preach, 
except musically. We called Dante the melodious 
Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not 

25 call Shakspeare the still more melodious Priest of 
a true Catholicism, the ' Universal Church ' of the 
Future and of all times ? No narrow superstition, 
harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or 
perversion : a Eevelation, so far as it goes, that 

30 such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness 
dwells in all Nature ; which let all men worship as 



THE HEBO AS POET 149 

they can ! We may say without offence, that there 
rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shak- 
speare too ; not unfit to make itself heard among the 
still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with 
these, if we understood them, but in harmony ! — 5 
I cannot call this Shakspeare a ^ Sceptic./ as some 
do; his indifference to the creeds and theological 
quarrels of his time misleading them. ISTo : neither 
unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriot- 
ism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his 10 
Faith. Such ^indifference' was the fruit of his 
greatness withal : his whole heart was in his own 
grand sphere of worship (we may call it such) ; 
these other controversies, vitally important to other 
men, were not vital to him. 15 

But call it worship, call it what you will, is it 
not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this 
that Shakspeare has brought us ? Por myself, I 
feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in 
the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. 20 
Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent 
Bringer of Light ? — And, at bottom, was it not per- 
haps far better that this Shakspeare, everyway an 
unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly 
message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because 25 
he saw into those internal Splendours, that he spec- 
ially was the ' Prophet of God ' : and was he not 
greater than Mahomet in that ? Greater ; and also, 
if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, 
more successful. It was intrinsically an error that 30 
notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood; 
and has come down to us inextricably involved in 



150 LECTURES ON HEROES 

error to this day dragging along with it such a coil 
of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a 
questionable step for me here and now to say, as I 
have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, 

5 and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity 
and simulacrum ; no Speaker, but a Babbler ! Even 
in Arabia, as X compute, Mahomet will have ex- 
hausted himself and become obsolete, while this 
Shakspeare, this Dante may still be young ; — while 

10 this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of 
Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited 
periods to come ! 

Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, 
even with ^schylus or Homer, why should he not, 

15 for veracity and universality, last like them ? He 
is sincere as they ; reaches deep down like them, to 
the universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, 
I think it had been better for him riot to be so con- 
scious ! Alas, poor Mahomet ; all that he was con- 

20 scious of was a mere error ; a futility and triviality, 
— as indeed such ever is. The truly great in him 
too was the unconscious : that he was a wild Arab 
lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great 
thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought 

25 to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history 
which were great ! His Koran has become a stupid 
piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like 
him, that God wrote that ! The Great Man here too, 
as always, is a Force of Nature : whatsoever is truly 

30 great in him springs-up from the marticulate deeps. 

Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who 



THE HERO AS POET 151 

rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could 
live without begging ; whom the Earl of Southamp- 
ton cast some kind glances on ; whom Sir Thomas 
Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the 
Treadmill ! We did not account him a god, like 5 
Odin, while he dwelt with us ; — on which point 
there were much to be said. But I will say rather, 
or repeat : In spite of the sad state Hero-worship 
now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has 
actually become among us. Which Englishman we 10 
ever made, in this land of ours, which million of 
Englishmen, would we not give-up rather than the 
Stratford Peasant ? There is no regiment of highest 
Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the 
grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour 15 
among foreign nations, as an ornament to our Eng- 
lish Household, what item is there that we would 
not surrender rather than him ? Consider now, if 
they asked us. Will you give-up your Indian Empire 
or your Shakspeare, you English ; never have had 20 
any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shak- 
speare ? Really it were a grave question. Official 
persons would answer doubtless in official language ; 
but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to 
answer : Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire ; we 25 
cannot do without Shakspeare ! Indian Empire 
will go, at any rate, some day ; but this Shakspeare 
does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot 
give-up our Shakspeare ! 

Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering 30 
him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful 
possession. England, before long, this Island of 



152 LECTURES ON HEROES 

ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English : 
in America, in New Holland, east and west to the 
very Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering 
great spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it 

5 that can keep all these together into virtually one 
Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but 
live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one 
another ? This is justly regarded as the greatest 
practical problem, the thing all manner of sover- 

10 eignties and governments are here to accomplish: 
what is it that will accomplish this ? Acts of 
Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. 
America is parted from us, so far as Parliament 
could part it. Call it not fantastic, for there is 

15 much reality in it : Here, I say, is an English King, 
whom no time or chance. Parliament or combination 
of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This King Shaks- 
peare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, 
over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strong- 

20 est of rallying-signs ; mi destructible ; really more 
valuable in that point of view than any other means 
or appliance whatsoever ? We can fancy him as 
radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, 
a thousand years hence. Erom Paramatta, from 

25 New York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish- 
Constable soever, English men and women are, they 
will say to one another : " Yes, this Shakspeare is 
ours ; we produced him, we speak and think by 
him ; we are of one blood and kind with him." The 

30 most common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, 
may think of that. 

Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that 



THE HERO AS POET 153 

it get an articulate voice ; that it produce a man 
who will speak-forth melodiously what the heart 
of it means ! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies 
dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in 
any protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the 5 
noble Italy is actually one: Italy produced its 
Dante ; Italy can speak ! The Czar of all the 
E-ussias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cos- 
sacks and cannons ; and does a great feat in keep- 
ing such a tract of Earth politically together ; but 10 
he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but 
it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of 
genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must 
learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster 
hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have 15 
rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is 
still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is 
bound together as no dumb Russia can be. — We 
must here end what we had to say of the Hero- 
Poet. 20 



LECTUEE IV 

THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER ; REFORMATION : 
KNOX ; PURITANISM 

[Friday, 15th May 1840] 

Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man 
as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to ex- 
plain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of 
♦the same material ; that given a great soul, open to 

5 the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given 
a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight 
and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring 
manner ; there is given a Hero, — the outward shape 
of whom will depend on the time and the environ- 

10 ment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I 
understand it, is a kind of Prophet ; in him too 
there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we 
must name it. He presides over the worship of the 
people ; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen 

15 Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people ; 
as the Prophet is their spiritual King with many 
captains : he guides them heavenward, by wise 
guidance through this Earth and its work. The 
ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call 

20 a voice from the unseen Heaven ; interpreting, even 

154 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 155 

as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar manner 
unfolding the same to men. The unseen Heaven, 
— the ' open secret of the Universe/ — which so 
few have an eye for! He is the Prophet shorn 
of his more awful splendour; burning with mild 5 
equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. 
This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old 
times; so in these, and in all times. One knows 
very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great 
latitude of tolerance is needful ; very great. But 10 
a Priest who is not this at all, who does not any 
longer aim or try to be this, is a character — of 
whom we had rather not speak in this place. 

Luther and Knox were by express vocation 
Priests, and did faithfully perform that function 15 
in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better 
here to consider them chiefly in their historical 
character, rather as Eeformers than Priests. There 
have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in 
calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a 20 
Leader of Worship ; bringing down, by faithful 
heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into the 
daily life of their people; leading them forward, 
as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they 
were to go. But when this same way was a rough 25 
one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual 
Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially 
to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more 
notable than any other. He is the warfaring and 
battling Priest ; who led his people, not to quiet 30 
faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful 
valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered ; 



156 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, 
be it higher or not. These two men we will ac- 
count our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our 
best Reformers. Nay I may ask. Is not every true 

5 E-eformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of 
all ? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice 
against Earth's visible force ; knows that it, the 
invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a be- 
liever in the divine truth of things ; a seer, seeing 

10 through the shows of things ; a worshipper, in one 
way or the other, of the divine truth of things ; 
a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will 
never be good for much as a Reformer. 

Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in vari- 

15 ous situations, building-up Religions, heroic Eorms 
of human Existence in this world. Theories of Life 
worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life 
by a Shakspeare, — we are now to see the reverse 
process ; which also is necessary, which also may 

20 be carried-on in the Heroic manner. Curious how 
this should be necessary : yet necessary it is. The 
mild shining of the Poet's light has to give place 
to the fierce lightning of the Reformer : unfortu- 
nately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot 

25 fail in History ! The Poet indeed, with his mild- 
ness, what is he but the product and ultimate 
adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its 
fierceness ? No wild Saint Dominies and Thebaid 
Eremites, there had been no melodious Dante ; 

30 rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, 
from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cran- 
mer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished 



THE HERO AS PMIEST 157 

Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his 
epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished ; 
that before long there will be a new epoch, new 
Reformers needed. 

Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always 5 
in the way of music ; be tamed and taught by our 
Poets, as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus 
of old. Or failing this rhythmic musical way, how 
good were it could we get so much as into the equa- 
ble way: I mean, if peaceable Priests, reforming 10 
from day to day, would always suffice us ! But it 
is not so ; even this latter has not yet been realised. 
Alas, the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, 
a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions 
are never wanting : the very things that were once 15 
indispensable furtherances become obstructions ; and 
need to be shaken-off, and left behind us, — a busi- 
ness often of enormous difficulty. It is notable 
enough, surely, how a Theorem or spiritual Repre- 
sentation, so we may call it, which once took-in 20 
the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory 
in all parts of it to the highly-discursive acute in- 
tellect of Dante, one of the greatest in the world, 
— had in the course of another century become 
dubitable to common intellects ; become deniable ; 25 
and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, 
obsolete as Odin's Theorem ! To Dante, human Ex- 
istence, and God's ways with men, were all well repre- 
sented by those Malebolges, Purgatorios ; to Luther 
not well. How was this ? Why could not Dante's 30 
Catholicism continue ; but Luther's Protestantism 
must needs follow? Alas, nothing will continue. 



158 LECTURES ON HEROES 

I do not make mucli of ' Progress of the Species/ 
as handled in these times of ours ; nor do I think 
you would care to hear much about it. The talk 
on that subject is too often of the most extrava- 
5 gant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself 
seems certain enough; nay we can trace-out the 
inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. 
Every man, as I have stated somewhere, is not 
only a learner but a doer : he learns with the mind 

10 given him what has been ; but with the same mind 
he discovers farther, he invents and devises some- 
what of his own. Absolutely without originality 
there is no man. No man whatever believes, or 
can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed : 

15 he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view 
of the Universe, and consequently his Theorem of 
the Universe, — which is an infinite Universe, and 
can never be embraced wholly or finally by any 
view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement : 

20 he enlarges somewhat, I say ; finds somewhat that 
was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, 
false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he 
has discovered or observed. It is the history of 
every man ; and in the history of Mankind we 

25 see it summed-up into great historical amounts, — 
revolutions, new epochs. Dante's Mountain of 
Purgatory does not stand 'in the ocean of the 
other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has once 
sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant 

30 in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It 
must cease to be believed to be there. So with 
all beliefs whatsoever in this world, — all Sys- 



THE HEBO AS PBIEST 159 

terns of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring 
from these. 

If we add now the melancholy fact, that when 
Belief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes un- 
sound, and errors, injustices and miseries every- 5 
where more and more prevail, we shall see material 
enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who 
will do faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he 
have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage ; if 
he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and lO 
make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor eye- 
servant; the work committed to him will be mis- 
done. Every such man is a daily contributor to 
the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he 
does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward 15 
look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery 
to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till 
they become insupportable ; and are then violently 
burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's 
sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and 20 
defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dis- 
honest practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther ; 
Shakspeare's noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it 
once looked and was, has to end in a French Eev- 
olution. The accumulation of offences is, as we 25 
say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder volcani- 
cally ; and there are long troublous periods before 
matters come to a settlement again. 

Surely it were mournful enough to look only at 
this face of the matter, and find in all human 30 
opinions and arrangements merely the fact that 
they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law 



160 LECTURES ON HEROES 

of death ! At bottom, it is not so : all death, here 
too we find, is but of the body, not of the essence 
or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or 
howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider 

5 scale. Odinism was Valo^ir ; Christianism was Htir 
mility, a nobler kind of Valour. No thought that 
ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man 
but was an honest insight into God's truth on 
man's part, and has an essential truth in it which 

10 endures through all changes, an everlasting posses- 
sion for us all. And, on the other hand, what a 
melancholy notion is that, which has to represent 
all men, in all countries and times except our own, 
as having spent their life in blind condemnable 

15 error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Mahome- 
tans, only that we might have the true ultimate 
knowledge ! All generations of men were lost and 
wrong, only that this present little section of a 
generation might be saved and right. They all 

20 marched forward there, all generations since the 
beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers 
into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill-up 
the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might 
march-over and take the place ! It is an incredible 

25 hypothesis. 

Such incredible hypothesis we have seen main- 
tained with fierce emphasis ; and this or the other 
poor individual man, with his sect of individual 
men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, 

30 towards sure victory : but when he too, with his 
hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into 
the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to 



THE HEBO AS PBIEST 161 

be said ? — Withal, it is an important fact in tlie 
nature of man, that he tends to reckon his own 
insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will 
always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way; 
but it must be in some wider, wiser way than this. 5 
Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, 
soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven's 
captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the 
empire of Darkness and Wrong ? Why should we 
misknow one another, fight not against the enemy 10 
but against ourselves, from mere difference of uni- 
form ? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold 
in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, 
the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong 
hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. 15 
Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all 
genuine things are with us, not against us. We 
are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same 
host. — Let us now look a little at this Luther's 
fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he 20 
comported himself in it. Luther too was of our 
spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to his country and 
time. 

As introductory to the whole, a remark about 
Idolatry will perhaps be in place here. One of 25 
Mahomet's characteristics, which indeed belongs to 
all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against 
Idolatry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: 
Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the 
Divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with, but 30 
have to denounce continually, and brand with in- 
jvr 



162 LECTUBE8 ON HEROES 

expiable reprobation; it is the chief of all the sins 
they see done under the sun. This is worth noting. 
We will not enter here into the theological question 
about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a 
5 symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of God ; and 
perhaps one may question whether any the most 
benighted mortal ever took it for more than a 
Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor 
image his own hands had made was God ; but that 

10 God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some 
way or other. And now in this sense, one may 
ask. Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by 
Symbols, by eidola, or things seen ? Whether seen, 
rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily 

15 eye ; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagi- 
nation, to the intellect: this makes a superficial, 
but no substantial difference. It is still a Thing 
Seen, significant of Godhead ; an Idol. The most 
rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and 

20 intellectual Representation of Divine things, and 
worships thereby; thereby is worship first made 
possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious 
forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feel- 
ings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All 

25 worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by 
Idols : — we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, 
and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. 

Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil 
must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men would not 

30 on all hands so reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so 
hateful to Prophets ? It seems to me as if, in the 
worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing 



THE HEBO AS PBIEST 163 

that had chiefly provoked the Prophet, and filled 
his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, 
was not exactly what suggested itself to his own 
thought, and came out of him in words to others, 
as the thing. The rudest heathen that worshipped 5 
Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, 
was superior to the .horse that worshipped nothing 
at all ! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit in 
that poor act of his ; analogous to what is still 
meritorious in Poets : recognition of a certain end- lo 
less divine beauty and significance in stars and all 
natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet 
so mercilessly condemn him ? The poorest mortal 
worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of 
it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and avoid- 15 
ance, if you will ; but cannot surely be an object 
of hatred. Let his heart be honestly full of it, the 
whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated 
thereby ; in one word, let him entirely believe in his 
Petish, — it will then be, I should say, if not well 20 
with him, yet as well as it can readily be made to 
be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there. 
But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idola- 
try, that, in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind 
is any longer honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. 25 
Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through 
it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have 
begun dimly to doubt that it was little more. Con- 
demnable Idolatry is insincere Idolatry. Doubt has 
eaten-out the heart of it: a human soul is seen 30 
clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, 
which it half-feels now to have become a Phantasm. 



164 LECTURES ON HEROES 

TMs is one of the balefiilest sights. Souls are no 
longer Jilled with their Eetish ; bnt only pretend to 
be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that 
they are filled. " You do not believe," said Cole- 

5 ridge ; " you only believe that you believe." It is 
the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbol- 
ism ; the sure symptom that de,ath is now nigh. It 
is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Wor- 
ship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more 

10 immoral act can be done by a human creature ; for 
it is the beginning of all immorality, or rather it is 
the impossibility henceforth of any morality whatso- 
ever : the innermost moral soul is paralysed thereby, 
cast into fatal magnetic sleep ! Men are no longer 

15 sincere men. I do not wonder that the earnest man 
denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with inex- 
tinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, 
are at death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is Cant, and 
even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere- 

20 Cant : that is worth thinking of ! Every sort of 
Worship ends with this phasis. 

I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, 
no less than any other Prophet. The wooden gods 
of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were 

25 not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's Pardons 
of Sin, made of sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. 
It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in 
every place and situation, that he come back to 
reality ; that he stand upon things, and not shows 

30 of things. According as he loves, and venerates, 
articulately or with deep speechless thought, the 
awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 165 

of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by 
Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detest- 
able to him. Protestantism too is the work of a 
Prophet : the prophet-work of that sixteenth cen- 
tury. The first stroke of honest demolition to an 5 
ancient thing grown false and idolatrous ; prepara- 
tory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, 
and authentically divine ! — 

At first view it might seem as if Protestantism 
were entirely destructive to this that we call Hero- lo 
worship, and represent as the basis of all possible 
good, religious or social, for mankind. One often 
hears it said that Protestantism introduced a new 
era, radically different from any the world had ever 
seen before : the era of ' private judgment,' as they 15 
call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man 
became his own Pope ; and learnt, among other 
things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spir- 
itual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not 
spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination 20 
among men, henceforth an impossibility ? So we 
hear it said. — Now I need not deny that Protes- 
tantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, 
Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that Eng- 
lish Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, 25 
was the second act of it ; that the enormous French 
Eevolution itself was the third act, whereby all 
sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might 
seem, abolished or made sure of abolition. Protes- 
tantism is the grand root from which our whole 30 
subsequent European History branches out. For 
the spiritual will always body itself forth in the 



166 LECTURES ON HEROES 

temporal history of men ; tlie spiritual is the be- 
ginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, 
the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, 
Independence and so forth ; instead of Kings, Bal- 

5 lot-boxes and Electoral suffrages : it seems made 
out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of 
men to a man, in things tem^poral or things spirit- 
ual, has passed away forever from the world. I 
should despair of the world altogether, if so. One 

10 of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. 
Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and 
spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; 
the hatefulest of things. But I find Protestantism, 
whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to 

15 be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and 
order. I find it to be a revolt against false sov- 
ereigns ; the painful but indispensable first prepara- 
tive for true sovereigns getting place among us ! 
This is worth explaining a little. 

20 Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that 
this of ' private judgment ' is, at bottom, not a new 
thing in the world, but only new at that epoch of 
the world. There is nothing generically new or 
peculiar in the E,ef ormation ; it was a return to 

25 Truth and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and 
Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genu- 
ine Teaching are and have been. Liberty of pri- 
vate judgment, if we will consider it, must at all 
times have existed in the world. Dante had not 

30 put-out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he 
was at home in that Catholicism of his, a free-see- 
ing soul in it, — if many a poor Hogstraten, Tetzel 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 167 

and Dr. Eck liad now become slaves in it. Liberty 
of judgment ? No iron chain, or outward force of 
any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to 
believe or to disbelieve : it is his own indefeasible 
light, that judgment of his ; he will reign, and be- 5 
lieve there, by the grace of God alone ! The sorri- 
est sophistical Bellarmine, preaching sightless faith 
and passive obedience, must first, by some kind of 
conviction, have abdicated his right to be convinced. 
His 'private judgment' indicated that, as the ad- 10 
visablest step he could take. The right of private 
judgment will subsist, in full force, wherever true 
men subsist. A true man believes with his whole 
judgment, with all the illumination and discern- 
ment that is in him, and has always so believed. 15 
A false man, only struggling to 'believe that he 
believes,' will naturally manage it in some other 
way. Protestantism said to this latter, Woe ! and 
to the former. Well done ! At bottom, it was no 
new saying ; it was a return to all old sayings that 20 
ever had been said. Be genuine, be sincere : that 
was, once more, the meaning of it. Mahomet be- 
lieved with his whole mind; Odin with his whole 
mind, — he, and all true Followers of Odinism. 
They, by their private judgment, had 'judged' 25 
— so. 

And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of 
private judgment, faithfully gone about, does by 
no means necessarily end in selfish independence, 
isolation ; but rather ends necessarily in the oppo- 30 
site of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes 
anarchy ; but it is error, insincerity, half -belief and 



168 LECTURES ON HEROES 

untruth that make it. A man protesting against 
error is on the way towards uniting himself with 
all men that believe in truth. There is no com- 
munion possible among men who believe only in 
5 hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has 
no power of sympathy even with things, — or he 
would believe them and not hearsays. No sym- 
pathy even with things ; how much less with his 
fellow-men ! He cannot unite with men ; he is an 

10 anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is 
unity possible ; — and there, in the longrun, it is as 
good as certain. 

For observe one thing, a thing too often left out 
of view, or rather altogether lost sight of, in this 

15 controversy : That it is not necessary a man should 
himself have discovered the truth he is to believe 
in, and never so sincerely to believe in. A Great 
Man, we said, was always sincere, as the first con- 
dition of him. But a man need not be great in 

20 order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of 
Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt 
unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can believe, 
and make his own, in the most genuine way, what 
he has received from another ; — and with bound- 

25 less gratitude to that other! The merit of origi- 
nality is not novelty ; it is sincerity. The believing 
man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, 
he believes it for himself, not for another. Every 
son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original 

30 man, in this sense ; no mortal is doomed to be an 
insincere man. Whole ages, what we call ages of 
Faith, are original ; all men in them, or the most 



THE BEUO AS PBIEST 169 

of men in them, sincere. These are the great and 
fruitful ages : every worker, in all spheres, is a 
worker not on semblance but on substance ; every 
work issues in a result : the general sum of such 
work is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends 5 
towards one goal ; all of it is additive, none of it 
subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, 
loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the 
poor Earth can produce blessedness for men. 

Hero-worship ? Ah me, that a man be self -sub- 10 
sistent, original, true, or what we call it, is surely 
the farthest in the world from indisposing him to 
reverence and believe other men's truth ! It only 
disposes, necessitates and invincibly compels him 
to disbelieve other men's dead formulas, hearsays 15 
and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes 
open, and because his eyes are open : does he need 
to shut them before he can love his Teacher of 
truth ? He alone can love, with a right gratitude 
and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who 20 
has delivered him out of darkness into light. Is 
not such a one a true Hero and Serpent-queller ; 
worthy of all reverence ! The black monster. False- 
hood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate 
by his valour ; it was he that conquered the world 25 
for us ! — See, accordingly, was not Luther himself 
reverenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, 
being verily such ? Napoleon, from amid boundless 
revolt of Sansculottism, became a King. Hero-wor- 
ship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sover- 30 
eignty are everlasting in the world: — and there 
is this in them, that they are grounded not on 



170 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

garnitures and semblances, but on realities and 
sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your 'pri- 
vate judgment ' ; no, but by opening them, and by 
having something to see! Luther's message was 
5 deposition and abolition to all false Popes and 
Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, 
to new genuine ones. 

All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suf- 
frages. Independence and so forth, we will take, 

10 therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no 
means a final one. Though likely to last a long 
time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we 
must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are 
past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are 

15 coming. In all ways, it behoved men to quit 
simulacra and return to fact ; cost what it might, 
that did behove to be done. With spurious Popes, 
and Believers having no private judgment, — quacks 
pretending to command over dupes, — what can you 

20 do ? Misery and mischief only. You cannot make 
an association out of insincere men; you cannot 
build an edifice except by plummet and level, — at 
n^^^angles to one another ! In all this wild revo- 
lutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I 

25 see the blessedest result preparing itself : not aboli- 
tion of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call 
a whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean sincere 
man, why may not every one of us be a Hero ? A 
world all sincere, a believing world : the like has 

30 been; the like will again be, — cannot help being. 
That were the right sort of Worshippers for Heroes : 
never could the truly Better be so reverenced as 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 171 

where all were True and Good! — But we must 
hasten to Luther and his Life. 

Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he 
came into the world there on the 10th of November 
1483. It was an accident that gave this honour to 5 
Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-labourers in a 
village of that region, named Mohra, had gone to 
the Eisleben Winter-Fair : in the tumult of this 
scene the Erau Luther was taken with travail, 
found refuge in some poor house there, and the lO 
boy she bore was named Martin Luther. Strange 
enough to reflect upon it. This poor Erau Luther, 
she had gone with her husband to make her small 
merchandisings ; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn 
she had been spinning, to buy the small winter- 15 
necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in 
the whole world, that day, there was not a more 
entirely unimportant-looking pair of people than 
this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all 
Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison ? 20 
There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; 
whose light was to flame as the beacon over long 
centuries and epochs of the world ; the whole world 
and its history was waiting for this man. It is 
strange, it is great. It leads us back to another 25 
Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment. Eighteen 
Hundred years ago, — of which it is fit that we say 
nothing, that we think only in silence; for what 
words are there ! The Age of Miracles past ? The 
Age of Miracles is forever here ! — 30 

I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function 



172 lectub:bis on memoms 

in this Earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that 
end by the Providence presiding over him and us 
and all things, that he was born poor, and brought- 
up poor, one of the poorest of men. He had to 
5 beg, as the school-children in those times did; 
singing for alms and bread, from door to door. 
Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's 
companion; no man nor no thing would put-on 
a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among 

10 things, not among the shows of things, had he 
to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet with weak 
health, with his large greedy soul, full of all 
faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But 
it was his task to get acquainted with realities, 

15 and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost : 
his task was to bring the whole world back to 
reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance ! 
A youth nursed-up in wintry whirlwinds, in deso- 
late darkness and difficulty, that he may step-forth 

20 at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a 

true man, as a god: a Christian Odin, — a right 

Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite 

asunder ugly enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters ! 

Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may 

25 fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, by 
lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had strug- 
gled-up through boyhood, better and worse ; dis- 
playing, in spite of all hindrances, the largest 
intellect, eager to learn : his father judging doubt- 

30 less that he might promote himself in the world, 
set him upon the study of Law. This was the path 
to rise; Luther, with little will in it either way. 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 17B 

had consented : he was now nineteen years of age. 
Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther peo- 
ple at Mansf eldt ; were got back again near Erfurt, 
when a thunderstorm came on; the bolt struck 
Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet. What is this 5 
Life of ours ? — gone in a moment, burnt-up like 
a scroll, into the blank Eternity ! What are all 
earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships ? 
They lie shrunk together — there ! The Earth has 
opened on them ; in a moment they are not, and 10 
Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, deter- 
mined to devote himself to Grod and God's service 
alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father 
and others, he became a Monk in the Augustine 
Convent at Erfurt. 15 

This was probably the first light-point in the his- 
tory of Luther, his purer will now first decisively 
uttering itself ; but, for the present, it was still as 
one light-point in an element all of darkness. He 
says he was a pious monk, ich bin ein frommer 20 
Monch geioesen; faithfully, painfully struggling to 
work-out the truth of this high act of his; but it 
was to little purpose. His misery had not les- 
sened ; had rather, as it were, increased into infini- 
tude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice in 25 
his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his 
grievance : the deep earnest soul of the man had 
fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubita- 
tions; he believed himself likely to die soon, and 
far worse than die. One hears with a new interest 30 
for poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror 
of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he was 



174 LECTURES ON HEROES 

doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not the 
humble sincere nature of the man ? What was he, 
that he should be raised to Heaven! He that had 
known only misery, and mean slavery : the news 
5 was too blessed to be credible. It could not be- 
come clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities 
and mass-work, a man's soul could be saved. He 
fell into the blackest wretchedness ; had to wander 
staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair. 

10 It must have been a most blessed discovery, that 
of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt 
Library about this time. He had never seen the 
Book before. It taught him another lesson than 
that of fasts and vigils. A brother monk too, of 

15 pious experience, was helpful. Luther learned now 
that a man was saved not by singing masses, but 
by the infinite grace of God: a more credible hy- 
pothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as 
on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the 

20 Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. 

He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be 

prized by such a man. He determined to hold by 

that ; as through life and to death he firmly did. 

This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his 

25 final triumph over darkness, what we call his con- 
version; for himself the most important of all 
epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace 
and clearness ; that, unfolding now the great tal- 
ents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise 

30 to importance in his Convent, in his country, and 
be found more and more useful in all honest busi- 
ness of life, is a natural result. He was sent on 



TBE HEEO AS PRIEST 175 

missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of tal- 
ent and fidelity fit to do their business well : the 
Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a 
truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as 
a valuable person ; made him Professor in his new 5 
University of Wittenberg, Preacher too at Witten- 
berg ; in both which capacities, as in all duties he 
did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common 
life, was gaining more and more esteem with all 
good men. 10 

It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw 
E-ome ; being sent thither, as I said, on mission 
from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second, and 
what was going-on at E-ome, must have filled the 
mind of Luther with amazement. He had come as 15 
to the Sacred City, throne of God's Highpriest on 
Earth ; and he found it — what we know ! Many 
thoughts it must have given the man ; many which 
we have no record of, which perhaps he did not 
himself know how to utter. This Eome, this scene 20 
of false priests, clothed not in the beauty of holi- 
ness, but in far other vesture, is false : but what is 
it to Luther ? A mean man he, how shall he re- 
form a world? That was far from his thoughts. 
A humble, solitary man, why should he at all 25 
meddle with the world ? It was the task of quite 
higher men than he. His business was to guide 
his own footsteps wisely through the world. Let 
him do his own obscure duty in it well; the rest, 
horrible and dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, so 
not in his. 

It is curious to reflect what might have been the 



176 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

issue, liad Eoman Popery happened to pass this 
Luther by ; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and 
not come athwart his little path, and force him to 
assault it ! Conceivable enough that, in this case, 

5 he might have held his peace about the abuses of 
Eome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal 
with them ! A modest quiet man ; not prompt he 
to attack irreverently persons in authority. His 
clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty ; to 

10 walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, 
and save his own soul alive. But the E-oman 
Highpriesthood did come athwart him: afar off 
at "Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in 
honesty for it ; he remonstrated, resisted, came to 

15 extremity; was struck-at, struck again, and so it 
came to wager of battle between them! This is 
worth attending to in Luther's history. Perhaps 
no man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever 
filled the world with contention. We cannot but 

20 see that he would have loved privacy, quiet dili- 
gence in the shade ; that it was against his will he 
ever became a notoriety. Notoriety : what would 
that do for him ? The goal of his march through 
this world was the Infinite Heaven ; an indubitable 

25 goal for him : in a few years, he should either have 
attained that, or lost it forever! We will say 
nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of 
theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, 
of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, 

30 that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced 
the Protestant E-eformation. We will say to the 
people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 177 

now: Get first into the sphere of thought by 
which it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, 
or of any man like Luther, otherwise than dis- 
tractedly ; we may then begin arguing with you. 

■ The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way 5 
of trade, by Leo Tenth, — who merely wanted to 
raise a little money, and for the rest seems to have 
been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he 
was anything, — arrived at Wittenberg, and drove 
his scandalous trade there. Luther's flock bought 10 
Indulgences; in the confessional of his Church, 
people pleaded to him that they had already got 
their sins pardoned. Luther, if he would not be 
found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard 
and coward at the very centre of the little space of 15 
ground that was his own and no other man's, had 
to step-forth against Indulgences, and declare aloud 
that they were a futility and sorrowful mockery, 
that no man's sins could be pardoned by them. It 
was the beginning of the whole Eeformation. We 20 
know how it went; forward from this first public 
challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October 1517, 
through remonstrance and argument; — spreading 
ever wider, rising ever higher; till it became un- 
quenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther's 25 
heart's-desire was to have this grief and other griefs 
amended ; his thought was still far other than that 
of introducing separation in the Church, or revolt- 
ing against the Pope, Father of Christendom. — 
The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this so 
Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have 
done with the noise of him : in a space of some 



178 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

three years, having tried various softer methods, 
he thought good to end it hj Jire. He dooms the 
Monk's writings to be burnt by the hangman, and 
his body to be sent bound to Rome, — probably for 
5 a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended 
with Huss, with Jerome, the centuty before. A 
short argument, fire. Poor Huss : he came to that 
Constance Council, with all imaginable promises 
and safe-conducts ; an earnest, not rebellious kind 

10 of man : they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon 
'three-feet wide, six-feet high, seven-feet long'; 
burnt the true voice of him out of this world; 
choked it in smoke and fire. That was 7iot well 
done! 

15 I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether re- 
volting against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by 
this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just 
wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. 
The bravest, if also one of the humblest, peacea- 

20 blest ; it was now kindled. These words of mine, 
words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as 
human inability would allow, to promote Grod's 
truth on Earth, and save men's souls, you, God's 
vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman 

25 and fire ? You will burn me and them, for an- 
swer to the God's-message they strove to bring 
you ? You are not God's vicegerent ; you are an- 
other's than his, I think ! I take your Bull, as an 
emparchmented Lie, and burn it. You will do 

30 what you see good next: this is what I do. — It 
was on the 10th of December 1520, three years 
after the beginning of the business, that Luther, 



THE HEBO AS PRIEST 179 

'with a great concourse of people/ took this in- 
dignant step of burning the Pope's fire-decree ' at 
the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.' Wittenberg looked 
on ^ with shoutings ' ; the whole world was looking 
on. The Pope should not have provoked that 5 
' shout ' ! It was the shout of the awakening of 
nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient 
of much, had at length got more than it could bear. 
Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood 
and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough: lo 
and here once more was a man found who durst 
tell all men that God's-world stood not on sem- 
blances but on realities ; that Life was a truth, and 
not a lie ! 

At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider 15 
Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker ; a bringer-back 
of men to reality. It is the function of great men 
and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours 
are wood; you put wax and oil on them, the flies 
stick on them : they are not God, I tell you, they 20 
are black wood ! Luther said to the Pope, This 
thing of yours that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is 
a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is nothing else ; it, 
and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone 
can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood 25 
of God's Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth 
and parchment ? It is an awful fact. God's 
Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are 
not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive 
me to it. Standing on this, I, a poor German 30 
Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, 
friendless, but on God's Truth; you with your 



180 LECTURES ON HEROES 

tiaras, triple-hats, witli your treasuries and armour- 
ies, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the 
Devil's Lie, and are not so strong ! — 

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there 
5 on the 17th of April 1521, may be considered as 
the greatest scene in Modern European History; 
the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent 
history of civilization takes its rise. After multi- 
plied negotiations, disputations, it had come to 

10 this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all 
the Princes of G-ermany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries 
spiritual and temporal, are assembled there : Luther 
is to appear and answer for himself, whether he 
will recant or not. The world's pomp and power 

15 sits there on this hand : on that, stands-up for God's 
Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's 
Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised 
him not to go ; he would not be advised. A large 
company of friends rode-out to meet him, with still 

20 more earnest warnings ; he answered, " Were there 
as many Devils in Worms as there are roof -tiles, I 
would on." The people, on the morrow, as he 
went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows 
and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in 

25 solemn words, not to recant : " Whosoever denieth 
me before men ! " they cried to him, — as in a kind 
of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in 
reality our petition too, the petition of the whole 
world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed 

30 under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted 
Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what 
not : " Free us ; it rests with thee ; desert us not ! " 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 181 

Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two 
hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise 
and honest tone ; submissive to whatsoever could 
lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any 
more than that. His writings, he said, were partly 5 
his own, partly derived from the Word of God. 
As to what was his own, human infirmity entered 
into it ; unguarded anger, blindness, many things 
doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he 
abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound 10 
truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. 
How could he ? " Confute me," he concluded, " by 
proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments : 
I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe 
nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here 15 
stand I ; I can do no other : God assist me ! " — It 
is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern 
History of Men. English Puritanism, England 
and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these 
two centuries ; French Eevolution, Europe and its 20 
work everywhere at present : the germ of it all lay 
there : had Luther in that moment done other, it 
had all been otherwise ! The European World 
.was asking him : Am I to sink ever lower into 
falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed 25 
death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the 
falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live ? — 

Great wars, contentions and disunion followed 
out of this Preformation ; which last down to our 
day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and 30 
crimination has been made about these. They are 



182 LECTURES ON HEROES 

lamentable, undeniable ; but after all, what has 
Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems 
strange reasoning to charge the Eeformation with 
all this. When Hercules turned the purifying 

5 river into King Augeas's stables, I have no doubt 
the confusion that resulted was considerable all 
around : but I think it was not Hercules's blame ; 
it was some other's blame ! The Keformation might 
bring what results it liked when it came, but the 

10 Eeformation simply could not help coming. To all 
Popes and Popes' advocates, expostulating, lament- 
ing and accusing, the answer of the world is : Once 
for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No 
matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we 

15 cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, 
given us to walk-by from Heaven above, finds it 
henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not be- 
lieve it, we will not try to believe it, — we dare 
not! The thing is untrue; we were traitors against 

20 the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think 
it true. Away with it ; let whatsoever likes come 
in the place of it : with it we can have no farther 
trade ! — Luther and his Protestantism is not re- 
sponsible for wars ; the false Simulacra that forced 

25 him to protest, they are responsible. Luther did 
what every man that God has made has not only 
the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do : 
answered a Falsehood when it questioned him. 
Dost thou believe me ? — 'No ! — At what cost so- 

30 ever, without counting of costs, this thing behoved 
to be done. Union, organisation spiritual and ma- 
terial, a far nobler than any Popedom or Peudalism 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 183 

in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for 
the world ; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not 
on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able 
either to come, or to stand when come. "With union 
grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak 5 
and act lies, we will not have anything to do. 
Peace ? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome 
grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, 
not a dead one ! 

And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable bless- 10 
ings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. 
The Old was true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days 
it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dis- 
honesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good 
then ; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless 15 
good. The cry of 'No Popery' is foolish enough 
in these days. The speculation that Popery is on 
the increase, building new chapels and so forth, 
may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Yery 
curious : to count-up a few Popish chapels, listen to 20 
a few Protestant logic-choppings, — to much dull- 
droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protes- 
tant, and say : See, Protestantism is dead; Popeism 
is more alive than it, will be alive after it ! — 
Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves 25 
Protestant are dead ; but Protestantism has not died 
yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will 
look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its 
Napoleon ; German Literature and the French Eev- 
olution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, 30 
at bottom, what else is alive hut Protestantism ? 
The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic 



184 LECTURES ON HEROES 

one merely, — not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of 
life! 

Popery can build new chapels ; welcome to do so, 
to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more 

5 than Paganism can, — wJiich also still lingers in 
some countries. But, indeed, it is with, these things, 
as with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the 
waves oscillating thither, thither on the beach ; for 
minutes you cannot tell how it is going; look in 

10 half an hour where it is, — look in half a century 
where your Popehood is ! Alas, would there were 
no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old 
Pope's revival ! Thor may as soon try to revive. — 
And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The 

15 poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as 
Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. 
We may say, the Old never dies till this happen, 
till all the soul of good that was in it have got 
itself transfused into the practical New. While a 

20 good work remains capable of being done by the 
Romish form; or, what is inclusive of all, while a 
pious life remains capable of being led by it, just so 
long, if we consider, will this or the other human 
soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So 

25 long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who re- 
ject it, till we in our practice too have appropriated 
whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not 
till then, it will have no charm more for any man. 
It lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as long as 

30 it can. — 

Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 185 

these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that 
none of them began so long as he continued living. 
The controversy did not get to fighting so long as 
he was there. To me it is proof of his greatness in 
all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a man 5 
that has stirred-up some vast commotion, who does 
not himself perish, swept-away in it ! Such is the 
usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, 
in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revo- 
lution; all Protestants, of what rank or function 10 
soever, looking much to him for guidance : and he 
held it peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. 
A man to do this must have a kingly faculty : he 
must have the gift to discern at all turns where the 
true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself 15 
courageously on that, as a strong true man, that 
other true men may rally round him there. He will 
not continue leader of men otherwise. Luther's 
clear deep force of judgment, his force of all 
sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation, among 20 
others, are very notable in these circumstances. 

Tolerance, I say ; a very genuine kind of toler- 
ance : he distinguishes what is essential, and what 
is not; the unessential may go very much as it 
will. A complaint comes to him that such and 25 
such a Eef ormed Preacher * will not preach with- 
out a cassock.' Well, answers Luther, what harm 
will a cassock do the man ? ^ Let him have a cas- 
sock to preach in ; let him have three cassocks if 
he find benefit in them ! ' His conduct in the 30 
matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking ; of the 
Anabaptists ; of the Peasants' War, shows a noble 



186 LECTURES ON HEROES 

strength, very different from spasmodic violence. 
With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is 
what : a strong just man, he speaks-forth what is 
the wise course, and all men follow him in that. 
5 Luther's Written Works give similar testimony of 
him. The dialect of these speculations is now 
grown obsolete for us ; but one still reads them 
with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere 
grammatical diction is still legible enough ; Luther's 

10 merit in literary history is of the greatest; his 
dialect became the language of all writing. They 
are not well written, these Eour-and-twenty Quartos 
of his ; written hastily, with quite other than liter- 
ary objects. But in no Books have I found a more 

15 robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man 
than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, sim- 
plicity ; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He 
flashes-out illumination from him ; his smiting idio- 
matic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of 

20 the matter. Good humour too, nay tender affection, 
nobleness, and depth : this man could have been a 
Poet too ! He had to ivorJc an Epic Poem, not 
write one. I call him a great Thinker; as indeed 
his greatness of heart already betokens that. 

25 Eichter says of Luther's words, ^his words are 
half-battles.' They may be called so. The essential 
quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer ; 
that he was a right piece of human Valour. No more 
valiant man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that 

30 one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kin- 
dred, whose character is valour. His defiance of 
the ' Devils ' in Worms was not a mere boast, as the 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 187 

like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of 
Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens 
of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, 
in his writings, this turns-up ; and a most small 
sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the 5 
room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the 
Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall ; 
the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. 
Luther sat translating one of the Psalms ; he was 
worn-down with long labour, with sickness, absti- 10 
nence from food: there rose before him some 
hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the 
Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started-up, 
with fiend-defiance ; flung his inkstand at the spec- 
tre, and it disappeared ! The spot still remains 15 
there ; a curious monument of several things. Any 
apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we 
are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense : 
but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to 
face, against Hell itself, can give no higher proof of 20 
fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists 
not on this Earth or under it. — Fearless enough ! 
^The Devil is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 
^ that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I 
'have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke 25 
' George,' of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, ' Duke 
' George is not equal to one Devil,' — far short of a 
Devil! 'If I had business at Leipzig, I would 
' ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke-Georges 
'for nine days running.' What a reservoir of Dukes 30 
to ride into ! — 

At the same time, they err greatly who imagine 



188 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

tliat this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse 
disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do, 
Far from that. There may be an absence of fear 
which arises from the absence of thought or affec- 

5 tion, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. 
We do not value the courage of the tiger highly ! 
With Luther it was far otherwise ; no accusation 
could be more unjust than this of mere ferocious 
violence brought against him. A most gentle heart 

10 withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly 
valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a stronger 
foe — flies : the tiger is not what we call valiant, 
only fierce and cruel. I know few things more 
touching than those soft breathings of affection, 

15 soft as a child's or mother's, in this great wild 
heart of Luther So honest, unadulterated with 
any cant ; homely, rude in their utterance ; pure as 
water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was 
all that downpressed mood of despair and reproba- 

20 tion, which we saw in his youth, but the outcome 
of preeminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too 
keen and fine ? It is the course such men as the 
poor Poet Cowper fall into. Luther to a slight 
observer might have seemed a timid, weak man; 

25 modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief 
distinction of him. It is a noble valour which is 
roused in a heart like this, once stirred-up into defi- 
ance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze. 

In Luther's Table-Talk, a posthumous Book of 

30 anecdotes and sayings collected by his friends, the 
most interesting now of all the Books proceeding 
from him, we have many beautiful unconscious dis- 



TffE HERO AS PRIEST 189 

plays of the man, and what sort of nature he had. 
His behaviour at the deathbed of his little Daugh- 
ter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most 
affecting things. He is resigned, that his little 
Magdalene should die, yet longs inexpressibly that 5 
she might live; — follows, in awestruck thought, 
the flight of her little soul through those unknown 
realms. Awestruck; most heartfelt, we can see; 
and sincere, — for after all dogmatic creeds and 
articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, lO 
or can know : His little Magdalene shall be with 
God, as God wills ; for Luther too that is all ; 
Islam is all. 

Once, he looks-out from his solitary Patmos, the 
Castle of Coburg, in the middle of the night : The 15 
great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds 
sailing through it, — dumb, gaunt, huge : — who 
supports all that ? " None ever saw the pillars of 
it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We 
must know that God is great, that God is good; 20 
and trust, where we cannot see. — Returning home 
from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of 
the harvest-fields : How it stands, that golden yel- 
low corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head 
bent, all rich and waving there, — the meek Earth, 25 
at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again ; 
the bread of man ! — In the garden at Wittenberg 
one evening at sunset, a little bird has perched for 
the night : That little bird, says Luther, above it 
are the stars and deep Heaven of worlds ; yet it 30 
has folded its little wings ; gone trustfully to rest 
there as in its home : the Maker of it has given it 



190 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

too a home ! Neither are mirtlif ul turns want- 
ing : there is a great free human heart in this man. 
The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, 
idiomatic, expressive, genuine ; gleams here and 
5 there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him 
to be a great brother man. His love of Music, in- 
deed, is not this, as it were, the summary of all 
these affections in him ? Many a wild unutterabil- 
ity he spoke-forth from him in the tones of his 

10 flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. 
Death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of 
music on the other; I could call these the two 
opposite poles of a great soul ; between these two 
all great things had room. 

15 Luther's face is to me expressive of him; in 
Kranach's best portraits I find the true Luther. 
A rude plebeian face ; with its huge crag-like brows 
and bones, the emblem of rugged energy ; at first, 
almost a repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially 

20 there is a wild silent sorrow ; an unnamable mel- 
ancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affec- 
tions ; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. 
Laughter was in this Luther, as we said ; but 
tears also were there. Tears also were appointed 

25 him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life 
was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after 
all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself 
heartily weary of living; he considers that God 
alone can and will regulate the course things are 

30 taking, and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is 
not far. As for him, he longs for one thing : that 
God would release him from his labour, and let 



THE HEBO AS PEIEST 191 

him depart and be at rest. They understand little 
of the man who cite this in discvedit of him ! — I 
will call this Lnther a true Great Man ; great in 
intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one 
of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not 5 
as a hewn obelisk ; but as an Alpine mountain, — so 
simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be 
great at all ; there for quite another purpose than 
being great ! Ah yes, unsabduable granite, pierc- 
ing far and wide into the Heavens ; yet in the 10 
clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with 
flowers ! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet ; 
once more, a true Son of Nature and Eact, for 
whom these centuries, and many that are to come 
yet, will be thankful to Heaven. 15 

The most interesting phasis which the Reforma- 
tion anywhere assumes, especially for us English, 
is that of Puritanism. In Luther's own country 
Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren 
affair : not a religion or faith, but rather now a 20 
theological jangling of argument, the proper seat 
of it not the heart ; the essence of it sceptical con- 
tention: which indeed has jangled more and more, 
down to Yoltaireism itself, — through Gustavus- 
Adolphus contentions onward to French-E/Cvolution 25 
ones ! But in our Island there arose a Puritan- 
ism, which even got itself established as a Pres- 
byterianism and National Church among the Scotch; 
which came forth as a real business of the heart ; 
and has produced in the world very notable fruit. 30 
In some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of 



192 LECTUBES ON HEB0E8 

Protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a 
Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, 
and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We 
must spare a few words for Knox ; himself a brave 
5 and remarkable man ; but still more important as 
Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider 
him to be, of the Faith that became Scotland's, New 
England's, Oliver CroniwelPs. History will have 
something to say about this, for some time to come ! 

10 We may censure Puritanism as we please ; and 
no one of us, I suppose, but would find it a very 
rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may 
understand that it was a genuine thing ; for Nature 
has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say 

15 sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in this 
world ; that strength, well understood, is the meas- 
ure of all worth. Give a thing time ; if it can suc- 
ceed, it is a right thing. Look now at American 
Saxondom ; and at that little Fact of the sailing of 

20 the Mayflower, two-hundred years ago, from Delft 
Haven in Holland ! Were we of open sense as the 
G-reeks were, we had found a Poem here ; one of 
Nature's own Poems, such as she writes in broad 
facts over great continents. For it was properly 

25 the beginning of America: there were straggling 
settlers in America before, some material as of a 
body was there ; but the soul of it was first this. 
These poor men, driven-out of their own country, 
not able well to live in Holland, determine on set- 

30 tling in the New World. Black untamed forests 
are there, and wild savage creatures ; but not so 
cruel as Starchamber hangmen. They thought the 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 193 

Earth would yield them food, if they tilled hon- 
estly; the everlasting heaven would stretch, there 
too, overhead ; they should be left in peace, to pre- 
pare for Eternity by living well in this world of 
Time ; worshipping in what they thought the true, 5 
not the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small 
means together ; hired a ship, the little ship May- 
flower, and made ready to set sail. 

In Neal's History of the Puritans^ is an account 
of the ceremony of their departure : solemnity, we lo 
might call it rather, for it was a real act of wor- 
ship. Their minister went down with them to the 
beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave 
behind; all joined in solemn prayer. That God 
would have pity on His poor children, and go with 15 
them into that waste wilderness, for He also had 
made that, He was there also as well as here. — 
Hah ! These men, I think, had a work ! The weak 
thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, 
if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despic- 20 
able, laughable then ; but nobody can manage to 
laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and 
sinews ; it has fire-arms, war-navies ; it has cunning 
in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm ; it can 
steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains ; — it is 25 
one of the strongest things under this sun at 
present ! 

In the history of Scotland, too, I can find prop- 
erly but one epoch : we may say, it contains noth- 
ing of world-interest at all but this Eeformation 30 
by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual 

1 Neal (London, 1755), i. 490. 
o 



194 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

broils, dissensions, massacrings ; a people in the last 
state of rudeness and destitution, little better per- 
haps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce bar- 
ons, not so much as able to form any arrangement 

5 with each other how to divide what they fleeced 
from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Co- 
lumbian Eepublics are at this day, to make of 
every alteration a revolution; no way of changing 
a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on 

10 gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very 
singular significance! ^Bravery' euough, I doubt 
not ; fierce fighting in abundance : but not braver 
or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea- 
king ancestors ; whose exploits we have not found 

15 worth dwelling on ! It is a country as yet without 
a soul : nothing developed in it but what is rude, 
external, semi-animal. And now at the Reforma- 
tion, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under 
the ribs of this outward material death. A canse, 

20 the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon 
set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from 
Earth; — whereby the meanest man becomes not 
a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible 
Church ; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man ! 

25 Well; this is what I mean by a whole 'nation 
of heroes ' ; a believing nation. There needs not a 
great soul to make a hero ; there needs a god-cre- 
ated soul which will be true to its origin ; that will 
be a great soul ! The like has been seen, we find. 

30 The like will be again seen, under wider forms than 
the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good 
done till then. — Impossible ! say some. Possible ? 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 195 

Has it not been, in this world, as a practised fact ? 
Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case ? Or are we 
made of other clay now ? Did the Westminster 
Confession of Faith add some new property to the 
soul of man ? God made the soul of man. He 5 
did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothe- 
sis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and 

with the fatal work and fruit of such ! 

But to return: This that Knox did for his Na- 
tion, I say, we may really call a resurrection as lo 
from death. It was not a smooth business ; but it 
was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had 
it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any 
price ; — as life is. The people began to live : they 
needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs 15 
soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch 
Industry ; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, 
Robert Burns : I find Knox and the Reformation 
acting in the heart's core* of every one of these per- 
sons and phenomena ; I find that without the Re- 20 
formation they would not have been. Or what of 
Scotland ? The Puritanism of Scotland became 
that of England, of New England. A tumult in 
the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a uni- 
versal battle and struggle over all these realms ; — 25 
there came out, after fifty-years struggling, what 
we all call the ' Glorious Revolution,' a Haheas- 
Corpus Act, Free Parliaments, and much else ! — 
Alas, is it not too true what we said. That many 
men in the van do always, like Russian soldiers 30 
march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up 
with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass-over 



196 LECTURES ON HEROES 

theiD dry-shod, and gain the honour ? How many 
earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant 
Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in 
rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and 
5 fall, greatly censured, bemired, — before a beautiful 
Revolution of Eighty-eight can step-over them in 
official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal 
three-times-three ! 

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish 

10 man, now after three-hundred years, should have 
to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsi- 
cally for having been, in such way as it was then 
possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen ! Had 
he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched 

15 into the corner, like so many others ; Scotland had 
not been delivered ; and Knox had been without 
blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all 
others, his country and the world owe a debt. He 
has to plead that Scotland, would forgive him for 

20 having been worth to it any million ^unblamable' 
Scotchmen that need no forgiveness ! He bared 
his breast to the battle ; had to row in French gal- 
leys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms ; 
was censured, shot-at through his windows ; had a 

25 right sore fighting life : if this world were his place 
of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of 
it. I cannot apologise for Knox. To him it is 
very indifferent, these two-hundred-and-fifty years 
or more, what men say of him. But we, having 

30 got above all those details of his battle, and living 
now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for 
our own sake, ought to look through the rumours 



THE HERO AS PBIEST 197 

and controversies enveloping the man, into the man 
himself. 

For one thing, I will remark that this post of 
Prophet to his • Nation was not of his seeking ; 
Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before 5 
he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor 
parents ; had got a college education ; become a 
Priest ; adopted the Eef ormation, and seemed well 
content to guide his own steps by the light of it, 
nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had 10 
lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching 
when any body of persons wished to hear his doc- 
trine : resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak 
the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of 
more; not fancying himself capable of more. In 15 
this entirely obscure way he had reached the age 
of forty; was with the small body of Eeformers 
who were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle, — 
when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after 
finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the 20 
forlorn hope, said suddenly. That there ought to 
be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's 
heart and gift in them ought now to speak ; — 
which gifts and heart one of their own number, 
John Knox the name of him, had : Had he not ? 25 
said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience : 
what then is his duty ? The people answered af- 
firmatively ; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, 
if such a man held the word that was in him silent. 
Poor Knox was obliged to stand-up ; he attempted 30 
to reply; he could say no word; — burst into a 
flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remember- 



198 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

ing, tliat scene. He was in grievous trouble for 
some days. He felt what a small faculty was his 
for this great work. He felt what a baptism he 
was called to be baptised withal. He ' burst into 
5 tears.' 

Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he 
is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not 
denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his 
other qualities or faults, is among the truest of 

10 men. With a singular instinct he holds to the 
truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, 
the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. 
However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on 
that and that only cmi he take his stand. In the 

15 Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the 
others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, 
had been sent as Galley-slaves, — some officer or 
priest, one day, presented them an Image of the 
Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphe- 

20 mous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother ? 
Mother of God ? said Knox, when the turn came 
to him : This is no Mother of God : this is ' a pented 
bredd,' — a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on 
it ! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for 

25 being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the 
thing into the river. It was not very cheap jest- 
ing there : but come of it what might, this thing to 
Knox was and must continue nothing other than 
the real truth; it was sl pented bredd: worship it he 

30 would not. 

He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, 
to be of courage ; the Cause they had was the true 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 199 

one, and must and would prosper ; the whole world 
could not put it down. Eeality is of God's mak- 
ing ; it is alone strong. How many pented hredds, 
pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be 
worshipped ! — This Knox cannot live but by fact : 5 
he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the 
cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sin- 
cerity itself, becomes heroic : it is the grand gift he 
has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual 
talent, no transcendent one ; — a narrow, inconsider- 10 
able man, as compared with Luther : but in heart- 
felt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as 
we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask. 
What equal he has? The heart of him is of the 
true Prophet cast. " He lies there," said the Earl 15 
of Morton at his grave, " who never feared the face 
of man." He resembles, more than any of the 
moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same in- 
flexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adhe- 
rence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of 20 
God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew 
Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of 
the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for 
that ; not require him to be other. 

Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits 25 
he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her 
there, have been much commented upon. Such 
cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. 
On reading the actual narrative of the business, 
what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must 30 
say one's tragic feeling is rather disappointed. 
They are not so coarse, these speeches ; they seem 



200 LECTURES ON HEROES 

to me about as fine as the circumstances would per- 
mit ! Knox was not there to do the courtier ; he came 
on another errand. Whoever, reading these collo- 
quies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar 
5 insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, 
mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. 
It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with 
the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to 
the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who 

10 did not wish to see the land of his birth made a 
hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and 
the Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, 
Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had no method of 
making himself agreeable ! " Better that women 

15 weep," said Morton, " than that bearded men be 
forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional op- 
position-party in Scotland : the Nobles of the coun- 
try, called by their station to take that post, were 
not found in it ; Knox had to go, or no one. The 

20 hapless Queen ; — but the still more hapless Country, 
if she were made happy ! Mary herself was not 
without sharpness enough, among her other quali- 
ties : " Who are you," said she once, " that presume 
to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm ? " 

25 — "Madam, a subject born within the same," an- 
swered he. Reasonably answered! If the ^sub- 
ject ' have truth to speak, it is not the ^ subject's ' 
footing that will fail him here. — 

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely 

30 it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. 
Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has 
becB- about it, what is tolerance ? Tolerance has 



TRB HEBO AS PBIJEST 201 

to tolerate the inessential; and to see well what 
that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just 
in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. 
But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to 
tolerate ! We are here to resist, to control and 5 
vanquish withal. We do not ' tolerate ' Falsehoods, 
Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us ; we 
say to them. Thou art false, thou art not tolerable ! 
We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an 
end to them, in some wise way ! I will not quarrel lo 
so much with the way ; the doing of the thing is 
our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full 
surely, intolerant. 

A man sent to row in French Galleys, and such- 
like, for teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot 15 
always be in the mildest humour ! I ani not pre- 
pared to say that Knox had a soft temper ; nor do 
I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An 
ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind honest af- 
fections dwelt in the much-enduring, hard-worn, 20 
ever-battling man. That he could rebuke Queens, 
and had such weight among those proud turbulent 
Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were ; and 
could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presi- 
dency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who 25 
was only ' a subject born within the same ' : this of 
itself will prove to us that he was found, close at 
hand, to be no mean acrid man; but at heart a 
healthful,^ strong, sagacious man. Such alone can 
bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pull- 30 
ing-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a 
seditious rioting demagogue : precisely the reverse 



202 LECTUEES ON HEROES 

is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and 
the rest of it, if we examine ! Knox wanted no 
pulling-down of stone edifices ; he wanted leprosy 
and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men, 
5 Tumult was not his element ; it was the tragic feat- 
ure of his life that he was forced to dwell so much 
in that. Every such man is the born enemy of 
Disorder ; hates to be in it : but what then ? 
Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general 

10 sumtotal of Disorder. Order is Truth, — each 
thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: 
Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. 

Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a 
vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in 

15 combination with his other qualities. He has a 
true eye for the ridiculous. His History, with its 
rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. 
When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, 
quarrel about precedence ; march rapidly up, take 

20 to hustling one another, twitching one another's 
rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like 
quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him everyway ! 
Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone ; though there 
is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illumi- 

25 nating laugh mounts-up over the earnest visage; 
not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the 
eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly 
man ; brother to the high, brother also to the low ; 
sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his 

30 pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edin- 
burgh house of his ; a cheery, social man, with faces 
thaf loved him ! They go far wrong who think this 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 203 

Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. 
Not at all : lie is one of the solidest of men. 
Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient ; a most shrewd, 
observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has 
very much the type of character we assign to the 5 
Scotch at present : a certain sardonic taciturnity is 
in him ; insight enough ; and a stouter heart than 
he himself knows of. He has the power of holding 
his peace over man's things which do not vitally con- 
cern him, — " They ? what are they ? " But the thing 10 
which does vitally concern him, that thing he will 
speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made 
to hear : all the more emphatic for his long silence. 

This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful 
man ! — He had a sore fight of an existence ; wres- 15 
tling with Popes and Principalities ; in defeat, con- 
tention, life-long struggle ; rowing as a galley-slave, 
wandering as an exile. A sore fight : but he won 
it. " Have you hope ? " they asked him in his last 
moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted 20 
his finger, ^pointed upwards with his finger,' and 
so died. Honour to him ! His works have not 
died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men's ; 
but the spirit of it never. 

One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. 25 
The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished 
to set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other 
words, he strove to make the G-overnment of Scot- 
land a Theocracy. This indeed is properly the sum 
of his offences, the essential sin ; for which what 30 
pardon can there be ? It is most true, he did, at 
bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theoc- 



204 LMCTUBES ON HEROES 

racy, or Government of God. He did mean that 
Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of per- 
sons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever 
else they might be doing, should walk according to 
5 the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was 
their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once 
to see such a thing realised ; and the Petition, TJiy 
Kingdom come, no longer an empty word. He was 
sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons 

10 clutch hold of the Church's property ; when he ex- 
postulated that it was not secular property, that it 
was spiritual property, and should be turned to true 
churchly uses, education, schools, worship ; — and 
the Eegent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of 

15 the shoulders, " It is a devout imagination ! " This 
was Knox's scheme of right and truth ; this he zeal- 
ously endeavoured after, to realise it. If we think 
the scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, 
we may rejoice that he could not realise it ; that it 

20 remained after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, 
and is a ' devout imagination ' still. But how shall 
we blame Jmn for struggling to realise it ? Theoc- 
racy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to 
be struggled for ! All Prophets, zealous Priests, 

25 are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished 
a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; 
Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zeal- 
ous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or what- 
soever else called, do essentially wish, and must 

30 wish? That right and truth, or God's Law, reign 
supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal 
(w^ll named in Knox's time, and namable in all 



THE HERO AS PRIEST 205 

times, a revealed ' Will of God ') towards which the 
Eeformer will insist that all be more and more 
approximated. All trne Eeformers, as I said, are 
by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a 
Theocracy. 5 

How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into 
Practice, and at what point our impatience with 
their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a 
question. I think we may say safely. Let them in- 
troduce themselves as far as they can contrive to lo 
do it ! If they are the true faith of men, all men 
ought to be more or less impatient always where 
they are not found introduced. There will never 
be wanting Regent-Murrays enough to shrug their 
shoulders, and say, " A devout imagination ! " We 15 
will praise the Hero-priest rather, who does what 
is in him to bring them in ; and wears-out, in toil, 
calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a God's 
Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not be- 
come too godlike ! 20 



LECTUEE y 

THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. JOHNSON, 

ROUSSEAU, BURNS oj 

■ J(^ 

[Tuesday, 19th May 1840] ^j^T 

Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of 
Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their 
appearance in the remotest times ; some of them 
have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot 

5 any more show themselves in this world. The 
Hero as Man of Letters, again, of which class we 
are to speak to-day, is altogether a product of these 
new ages ; and so long as the wondrous art of 
Writing, or of E-eady-writing which we call Printing, 

10 subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of 

the main forms of Heroism for all future ages. He 

is, in various respects, a very singular phenomenon. 

He is new, I say ; he has hardly lasted above 

a century in the world yet. Never, till about a 

15 hundred years ago, was there seen any figure of a 
Great Soul living apart in that anomalous manner ; 
endeavouring to speak-forth the inspiration that 
was in him by Printed Books, and find place and 
subsistence by what the world would please to give 

20 him for doing that. Much had been sold and 

206 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 207 

bought, and left to make its own bargain in the 

.marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic 

^ Soul never till then, in that naked manner. He, 

/ ^ with his copy-rights and copy-wrongs, in his squalid 

^ garret, in his rusty coat ; ruling (for this is what 5 

" >^ he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations 

5 and generations who would, or would not, give him 

bread while living, — is a rather curious spectacle ! 

Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. 

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp lo 
himself into strange shapes : the world knows not 
well at any time what to do with him, so foreign 
V is his aspect in the world ! It seemed absurd to us, 
4 that men, in their rude admiration, should take 
some wise great Odin for a god, and worship him 15 
as such ; some wise great Mahomet for one god- 
inspired, and religiously follow his Law for twelve 
centuries : but that a wise great Johnson, a Burns, 
a E-ousseau, should be taken for some idle nonde- 
script, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and 20 
have a few coins and applauses thrown him, that 
he might live thereby ; this perhaps, as before 
hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of 
things ! — Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always 
that determines the material, this same Man-of- 25 
Letters Hero must be regarded as our most impor- 
tant modern person. He, such as he may be, is 
the soul of all. What he teaches, the whole world 
will do and make. The world's manner of dealing 
with him is the most significant feature of the 30 
world's general position. Looking well at his life, 
we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible 



208 LECTURES ON HEEOES 

for us, into the life of those singular centuries 
which have produced him, in which we ourselves 
live and work. 

There are genuine Men of Letters, and not gen- 
6 nine ; as in every kind there is a genuine and a 
spurious. If Hero be taken to mean genuine, then 
I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found 
discharging a function for us which is ever honour- 
able, ever the highest ; and was once well known to 

10 be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such way 
as he has, the inspired soul of him ; all that a man, 
in any case, can do. I say inspired; for what we 
call ' originality,' ' sincerity,' ' genius,' the heroic 
quality we have no good name for, signifies that. 

15 The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of 
things, in the True, Divine and Eternal, which ex- 
ists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, 
Trivial : his being is in that ; he declares that 
abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in declaring 

20 himself abroad. His life, as we said before, is a 
piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself : 
all men's life is, — but the weak many know not 
the fact, and are untrue to it, in most times ; the 
strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it 

25 cannot be hidden from them. The Man of Letters, 
like every Hero, is there to proclaim this in such 
sort as he can. Intrinsically it is the same function 
which the old generations named a man Prophet, 
Priest, Divinity for doing; which all manner of 

30 Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world 
to do. 

Pichte, the German Philosopher, delivered, some 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 209 

forty years ago at Erlangen, a highly remarkable 
Course of Lectures on this subject : ' Uebei' das 
Wesen des Gelehrten, On the Nature of the Literary 
Man.' Fichte, in conformity with the Transcen- 
dental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished 5 
teacher, declares first : That all things which we 
see or work with in this Earth, especially we our- 
selves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or 
sensuous Appearance : that under all there lies, 
as the essence of them, what he calls the ' Divine\ lo 
Idea of the World ' ; ( this is the E-eality which! 
' lies at the bottom of all Appearance.' \ To the 
mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognisable 
in the world ; they live merely, says Fichte, among 
the superficialities, practicalities and shows of 15 
the world, not dreaming that there is anything 
divine under them. /But the Man of Letters is Uxi^^^" 
sent hither specially that he may discern for him- * 
self, and make manifest to us, this same Divine /^ ^ 
Idea : I in every new generation it will manifest 20 
itself m a new dialect ; and he is there for the 
purpose of doing that. Such is Fichte's phraseol- 
ogy ; with which we need not quarrel. It is his 
way of naming what I here, by other words, am 
striving imperfectly to name ; what there is at 25 
present no name for : The unspeakable Divine 
Significance, full of splendour, of wonder and ter- 
ror, that lies in the being of every man, of every 
thing, — the Presence of the God who made every 
man and thing. Mahomet taught this in his dia- 30 
lect ; Odin in his : it is the thing which all thinking 
hearts, in one dialect or another, are here to teach. 



210 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Eichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a 
Prophet, or as he prefers^ to phrase it, a Priest, con- 
tinually unfolding the Godlike to men : Men of 
Letters are a Perpetual Priesthood, from age to 
age, teaching all men that a God is still present in 
their life ; that all ' Appearance,' whatsoever we 
^ see in the world, is but as a vesture for the 'Divine 
Idea of the World,' for ' that which lies at the bot- 
tom of Appearance.' In the true Literary Man 

10 there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the 
world, a sacredness : he is the light of the world ; 
the world's Priest : — guiding it, like a sacred Pil- 
lar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the 
waste of Time. Fichte discriminates with sharp 

15 zeal the true Literary Man, what we here call the 
^e?'o as Man of Letters, from multitudes of false 
unheroic. Whoever lives not wholly in this Di- 
vine Idea, or living partially in it, struggles not, as 
for the one good, to live wholly in it, — he is, let 

20 him live where else he like, in what pomps and 
prosperities he like, no Literary Man ; he is, says 
Fichte, a ' Bungler, Stumper.^ Or at best, if he 
belong to the prosaic provinces, he may be a ' Hod- 
man ' ; Fichte even calls him elsewhere a ' ISTonen- 

25 tity,' and has in short no mercy for him, no wish 

that he should continue happy among us ! This is 

Fichte's notion of the Man of Letters. It means, 

in its own form, precisely what we here mean. 

In this point of view, I consider that, for the last 

30 hundred years, by far the notablest of all Literary 
Men is Fichte's countryman, G-oethe. To that man 
too, in a strange way, there was given what we 



THE HEBO AS MAN OF LETTERS 211 

may call a life in the Divine Idea of the World ; 
vision of the inward divine mystery : and strangely, 
out of his Books, the world rises imaged once more 
as godlike, the workmanship and temple of a God. 
Illuminated all, not in fierce impure fire-splendour 5 
as of Mahomet, but in mild celestial radiance ; — 
really a Prophecy in these most unprophetic times ; 
to my mind, by far the greatest, though one of the 
quietest, among all the great things that have come 
to pass in them. Our chosen specimen of the Hero lo 
as Literary Man would be this Goethe. And it 
were a very pleasant plan for me here to discourse 
of his heroism : for I consider him to be a true 
Hero ; heroic in what he said and did, and perhaps 
still more in what he did not say and did not do ; 15 
to me a noble spectacle : a great heroic ancient 
man, speaking and keeping silence as an ancient 
Hero, in the guise of a most modern, high-bred, 
high-cultivated Man of Letters ! We have had no 
such spectacle ; no man capable of affording such, 20 
for the last hundred-and-fifty years. 

But at present, such is the general state of 
knowledge about Goethe, it were worse than useless 
to attempt speaking of him in this case. Speak as 
I might, Goethe, to the great majority of you, 25 
would remain problematic, vague ; no impression 
but a false one could be realised. Him we must 
leave to future times. Johnson, Burns, E-ousseau, 
three great figures from a prior time, from a far 
inferior state of circumstances, will suit us better 30 
here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century ; the 
conditions of their life far more resemble what 



212 LECTURES ON HEROES 

those of ours still are in England, than what Goethe's 
in Germany were. Alas, these men did not con- 
quer like him ; they fought bravely, and fell. They 
were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic 

5 seekers of it. They lived under galling conditions ; 
struggling as under mountains of impediment, and 
could not unfold themselves into clearness, or vic- 
torious interpretation of that ^ Divine Idea.' It 
is rather the Tombs of three Literary Heroes that 

10 I have to show you. There are the monumental 
heaps, under which three spiritual giants lie 
buried. Very mournful, but also great and full of 
interest for us. We will linger by them for a 
while. 

15 Complaint is often made, in these times, of what 
we call the disorganised condition of society : how 
ill many arranged forces of society fulfil their 
work ; how many powerful forces are seen working 
in a wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged man- 
20 ner. It is too just a complaint, as we all know. 
But perhaps if we look at this of Books and the 
Writers of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the 
summary of all other disorganisation ; — a sort of 
heart, from which, and to which, all other confu- 
25 sion circulates in the world ! Considering what 
Book-writers do in the world, and what the world 
does with Book-writers, I should say, It is the 
most anomalous thing the world at present has to 
show. — We should get into a sea far beyond sound- 
so ing, did we attempt to give account of this : but we 
must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 213 

worst element in the life of these three Literary 
Heroes was, that they found their business and 
position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is 
tolerable travelling ; but it is sore work, and many 
have to perish, fashioning a path through the im- 5 
passable ! 

Our pious Pathers, feeling well what importance 
lay in the speaking of man to men, founded 
churches, made endowments, regulations ; every- 
where in the civilised world there is a Pulpit, 10 
environed with all manner of complex dignified 
appurtenances and furtherances, that therefrom a 
man with the tongue may, to best advantage, 
address his fellow-men. They felt that this was 
the most important thing ; that without this there 15 
was no good thing. It is a right pious work, that 
of theirs ; beautiful to behold ! But now with the 
art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total 
change has come over that business. The Writer 
of a Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to 20 
this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all 
men in all times and places ? Surely it is of the 
last importance that he do his work right, whoever 
do it wrong ; — that the eye report not falsely, for 
then all the other members are astray ! Well ; 25 
how he may do his work, whether he do it right or 
wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in 
the world has taken the pains to think of. To a 
certain shopkeeper, trying to get some money for 
his books, if lucky, he is of some importance ; to 30 
no other man of any. Whence he came, whither 
he is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he 



214 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

might be furthered on his course, no one asks. He 
is an accident in society. He wanders like a wild 
Ishmaelite, in a world of which he is as the spirit- 
ual light, either the guidance or the misguidance ! 
5 Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miracu- 
lous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes 
were the first form of the work of a Hero ; Books, 
written words, are still miraculous Runes, the 
latest form ! In Books lies the soul of the whole 

10 Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of the Past, 
when the body and material substance of it has 
altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets 
and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast cities, high- 
domed, many-engined, — they are precious, great : 

15 but what do they become ? Agamemnon, the many 
Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is 
gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mourn- 
ful wrecks and blocks : but the Books of Greece ! 
There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally 

20 lives 5 can be called-up again into life. No magic 
Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind 
has done, thought, gained or been : it is lying as in 
magic preservation in the pages of Books. They 
are the chosen possession of men. 

25 Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes 
were fabled to do ? They persuade men. Not 
the wretchedest circulating-library novel, which 
foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages, but 
will help to regulate the actual practical weddings 

30 and households of those foolish girls. So ^ Celia ' 
felt, so ^ Clifford ' acted : the foolish Theorem of 
Life, stamped into those young brains, comes out 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 215 

as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any 
Rune in the wildest imagination of Mythologist 
ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, 
some Books have done ! What built St. Paul's 
Cathedral ? Look at the heart of the matter, it 5 
was that divine Hebrew Book, — the word partly 
of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianit- 
ish herds, four-thousand years ago, in the wilder- 
nesses of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet 
nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of 10 
which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and com- 
paratively insignificant corollary, the true reign of 
miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with 
a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, 
the Past and Distant with the Present in time and 15 
place ; all times and all places with this our actual 
Here and Now. All things were altered for men ; 
all modes of important work of men : teaching, 
preaching, governing, and all else. 

To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities 20 
are a notable, respectable product of the modern 
ages. Their existence too is modified, to the very 
basis of it, by the existence of Books. Universi- 
ties arose while there were yet no Books procurable ; 
while a man, for a single Book, had to give an 25 
estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when 
a man had some knowledge to communicate, he 
should do it by gathering the learners round him, 
face to face, was a necessity for him. If you 
wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must 30 
go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as 
thirty-thousand, went to hear Abelard and that 



216 LECTURES ON HEROES 

metaphysical theology of his. And now for any 
other teacher who had also something of his own 
to teach, there was a great convenience opened : so 
many thousands eager to learn were already assem- 
5 bled yonder; of all places the best place for him 
was that. For any third teacher it was better 
still ; and grew ever the better, the more teachers 
there came. It only needed now that the King 
took notice of this new phenomenon ; combined or 

10 agglomerated the various schools into one school ; 
gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and 
named it Universitas, or School of all Sciences: 
the University of Paris, in its essential characters, 
was there. The model of all subsequent Universi- 

15 ties; which down even to these days, for six cen- 
turies now, have gone on to found themselves. 
Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universities. 
It is clear, however, that with this simple cir- 
cumstance, facility of getting Books, the whole 

20 conditions of the business from top to bottom were 
changed. Once invent Printing, you metamor- 
phosed all Universities, or superseded them ! The 
Teacher needed not now to gather men personally 
round him, that he might speak to them what he 

25 knew : print it in a Book, and all learners far and 
wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, 
much more effectually to learn it ! — Doubtless there 
is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of 
Books may still, in some circumstances, find it con- 

30 venient to speak also, — witness our present meet- 
ing here ! There is, one would say, and must ever 
remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 217 

for Speech, as well as for Writing and Printing. 
In regard to all things this must remain ; to Uni- 
versities among others. But the limits of the two 
have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; 
much less pat in practice; the University which 5 
would completely take-in that great new fact, of 
the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a 
clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the 
Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come 
into existence. If we think of it, all that a Uni- 10 
versity, or final highest School can do for us, is 
still but what the first School began doing, — teach 
us to read. /("We learn to 7'ead, in various languages, 
in various sciences ; we learn the alphabet and let- 
ters of all manner of Books. But the place where 15 
we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, 
is the Books themselves ! It depends on what we 
read, after all manner of Professors have done their 
y best for us. The true University of these days is 
a Collection of Books. 20 

But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all 
is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the 
introduction of Books. The Church is the working 
recognised Union of our Priests or Prophets, of 
those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. 25 
While there was no Writing, even while there was 
no Easy-writing or Printing, the preaching of the 
voice was the natural sole method of performing 
this. But now with Books ! — He that can write 
a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the 30 
Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England 
and of All England? I many a time say, the 



218 LECTURES ON HEROES 

writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, 
these are the real working effective Church of a 
modern country. Nay not only our preaching, but 
even our worship, is not it too accomplished by 

5 means of Printed Books ? The noble sentiment 
which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious 
words, which brings melody into our hearts, — is 
not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the 
nature of worship ? There are many, in all coun- 

10 tries, who, in this confused time, have no other 
method of worship. He who, in any way, shows 
us better than we knew before that a lily of the 
fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an 
effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the 

15 handwriting, made visible there, of the great Maker 
of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us 
sing with him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. 
Essentially so. How much more he who sings, 
who says, or in any way brings home to our heart 

20 the noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances 
of a brother man ! He has verily touched our 
hearts as with a live coal from the altar. Perhaps 
there is no worship more authentic. 

Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an ' apoca- 

25 lypse of Nature,' a revealing of the ' open secret.' 
It may well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a 
'continuous revelation' of the G-odlike in the Ter- 
restrial and Common. The Godlike does ever, in 
very truth, endure there ; is brought out, now in this 

30 dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clear- 
ness : all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, 
consciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 219 

stormf ul indignation of a Byron, so wayward and 
perverse, may have touches of it ; nay the withered 
mockery of a French sceptic, — his mockery of the 
False, a love and worship of the True. How much 
more the sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a 5 
Goethe ; the cathedral-music of a Milton ! They 
are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes 
of a Burns, — skylark, starting from the humble 
furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and 
singing to us so genuinely there ! For all true 10 
singing is of the nature of worship ; as indeed all 
true working may be said to be, — whereof such 
singing is but the record, and fit melodious repre- 
sentation, to us. Fragments of a real 'Church 
Liturgy' and 'Body of Homilies,' strangely disguised 15 
from the common eye, are to be found weltering in 
that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely 
call Literature ! Books are our Church too. 

Or turning now to the Government of men. 
Witenagemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. 20 
The affairs of the nation were there deliberated 
and decided ; what we were to do as a nation. But 
does not, though the name Parliament subsists, the 
parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and 
at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, out 25 
of Parliament altogether ? Burke said there were 
Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' 
Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more im- 
portant far than they all. It is not a figure of 
speech, or a witty saying ; it is a literal fact, — very 30 
momentous to us in these times. Literature is our 
Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily 



220 LECTURES ON HEROES 

out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democ- 
racy : invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. 
Writing brings Printing ; brings universal everyday 
extempore Printing as we see at present. Whoever 
can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, be- 
comes a power, a branch of government, with inalien- 
able weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. 
It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or 
garnitures : the requisite thing is, that he have a 

10 tongue which others will listen to ; this and nothing 
more is requisite. The nation is governed by all 
that has tongue in the nation : Democracy is virtually 
tJiere. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will 
have itself, by and by, organised ; working secretly 

15 under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will 
never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, 
visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will in- 
sist on becoming palpably extant. — 

On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion 

20 that, of the things which man can do or make here 
below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and 
worthy are the things we call Books ! Those poor 
bits of rag-paper with black ink on them ; — from 
the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew Book, 

25 what have they not done, what are they not doing ! 
— For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the 
thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it 
not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's faculty 
that produces a Book ? It is the ThougJit of man ; 

30 the true thaumaturgic virtue ; by which man works 
all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings 
to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. This London 



TBE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS 221 

City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, 
cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and 
tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of 
Thoughts made into One 5 — a huge immeasurable 
Spirit of Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, 5 
smoke, dust. Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, 
Katherine Docks, and the rest of it ! Not a brick 
was made but some man had to thinh of the making 
of that brick. — The thing we called ^ bits of paper 
with traces of black ink,' is the purest embodiment 10 
a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in 
all ways, the activest and noblest. 

All this, of the importance and supreme impor- 
tance of the Man of Letters in modern Society, 
and how the Press is to such a degree superseding 15 
the Pulpit, the Senate, the Senatus Academicus and 
much else, has been admitted for a good while ; and 
recognised often enough, in late times, with a sort 
of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems 
to me, the Sentimental by and by will have to give 20 
place to the Practical. If Men of Letters are so 
incalculably influential, actually performing such 
work for us from age to age, and even from day 
to day, then I think we may conclude that Men of 
Letters will not always wander like unrecognised 25 
unregulated Ishmaelites among us ! Whatsoever 
thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power 
will cast-off its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth 
one day with palpably articulated, universally visi- 
ble power. That one man wear the clothes, and 30 
take the wages, of a function which is done by 
quite another : there can be no profit in this ; this 



222 LECTUEES ON HEROES 

is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, tlie making 
of it right, — what a business, for long times to 
come ! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation 
of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, en- 
5 cumbered with all manner of complexities. If you 
asked me what were the best possible organisation 
for the Men of Letters in modern society; the ar- 
rangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded 
the most accurately on the actual facts of their 

10 position and of the world's position, — I should 
beg to say that the problem far exceeded my fac- 
ulty ! It is not one man's faculty; it is that of 
many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that 
will bring-out even an approximate solution. What 

15 the best arrangement were, none of us could say. 
But if you ask. Which is the worst? I answer: 
This which we now have, that Chaos should sit 
umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or 
any good one, there is yet a long way. 

20 One remark I must not omit. That royal or par- 
liamentary grants of money are by no means the 
chief thing wanted ! To give our Men of Letters 
stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, 
will do little towards the business. On the whole, 

25 one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of 
money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, 
it is no evil to be poor ; that there ought to be 
Literary Men poor, — to show whether they are 
genuine or not ! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good 

30 men doomed to beg, were instituted in the Chris- 
tian Church; a most natural and even necessary 
development of the spirit of Christianity. It was 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 223 

itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, 
Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and 
Degradation. We may say, that lie who has not 
known those things, and learned from them the 
priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a 5 
good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go 
barefoot, in coarse woollen cloak with a rope round 
your loins, and be despised of all the world, was 
no beautiful business; — nor an honourable one in 
any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so 10 
had made it honoured of some ! 

Begging is not in our course at the present time : 
but for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson 
is not perhaps the better for being poor? It is 
needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward 15 
profit, that success of any kind is not the goal he 
has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism 
of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart ; 
need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart, — to be, 
with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from 20 
it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, 
made-out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. 
"Who knows but, in that same ^ best possible organi- 
sation ' as yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an 
important element ? What if our Men of Letters, 25 
men setting-up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still 
then, as they now are, a kind of ^involuntary mo- 
nastic order ' ; bound still to this same ugly Poverty, 
— till they had tried what was in it too, till they 
had learned to make it too do for them ! Money, 30 
in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We 
must know the province of it, and confine it there ; 



224 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get 
farther. 

Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper 
season for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled, 
5 — how is the Burns to be recognised that merits 
these ? He must pass through the ordeal, and 
prove himself. TJiis ordeal ; this wild welter of a 
chaos which is called Literary Life : this too is 
a kind of ordeal ! There is clear truth in the idea 

10 that a struggle from the lower classes of society, 
towards the upper regions and rewards of society, 
must ever continue. Strong men are born there, 
who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The 
manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle 

15 of these constitutes, and must constitute, what is 
called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, 
as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that 
struggle ? There is the whole question. To leave 
it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance ; a whirl 

20 of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other ; one 
of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and- 
niTiety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson 
languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the 
yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken- 

25 hearted as a Ganger; your Rousseau driven into 

mad exasperation, kindling Erench Revolutions by 

his paradoxes : this, as we said, is clearly enough 

the worst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us ! 

And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming ; 

30 advancing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of 
centuries : this is a prophecy one can risk. For 
so soon as men get to discern the importance of a 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 225 

thing, they do infallibly set about arranging it, 
facilitating, forwarding it ; and rest not till, in 
some approximate degree, they have accomplished 
that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Gov- 
erning Classes at present extant in the world, there 5 
is no class comparable for importance to that Priest- 
hood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which 
he who runs may read, — and draw inferences from. 
" Literature will take care of itself," answered Mr. 
Pitt, when applied-to for some help for Burns. 10 
"Yes," adds Mr. Southey, "it will take care of 
itself ; and of you too, if you do not look to it ! " 

The result to individual Men of Letters is .not 
the momentous one; they are but individuals, an 
infinitesimal fraction of the great body ; they can 15 
struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been 
wont. But it deeply concerns the whole society, 
whether it will set its ligJit on high places, to walk 
thereby ; or trample it under foot, and scatter it 
in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagra- 20 
tion), as heretofore ! Light is the one thing wanted 
for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the 
world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, 
and be the best world man can make it. I call 
this anomaly of a disorganic Literary Class the 25 
heart of all other anomalies, at once product and 
parent; some good arrangement for that would be 
as the punctum saliens of a new vitality and just 
arrangement for all. Already, in some European 
countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some 30 
beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary 
Class; indicating the gradual possibility of such. 



226 LECTUBES OiV HEEOES 

I believe that it is possible; that it will have to 
be possible. 

By far the most interesting fact I hear about 
the Chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at 
5 clearness, but which excites endless curiosity even 
in the dim state : this namely, that they do attempt 
to make their Men of Letters their Governors ! It 
would be rash to say, one understood how this was 
done, or with what degree of success it was done. 

10 All such things must be very -i^^isuccessful ; yet a 
small degree of success is precious ; the very at- 
tempt how precious ! There does seem to be, all 
over China, a more or less active search everywhere 
to discover the men of talent that grow up in the 

15 young generation. Schools there are for every one : 
a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The 
youths who distinguish themselves in the lower 
school are promoted into favourable stations in the 
higher, that they may still more distinguish them- 

20 selves, — forward and forward: it appears to be 
out of these that the Official Persons, and incipi- 
ent Governors, are taken. These are they whom 
they try first, whether they can govern or not. 
And surely with the best hope : for they are the 

25 men that have already shown intellect. Try them : 
they have not governed or administered as yet ; 
perhaps they cannot; but there is no doubt they 
have some Understanding, — without which no man 
can ! Neither is Understanding a tool, as we are 

30 too apt to figure ; ' it is a hand which can handle 
any tool.' Try these men: they are of all others 
the best worth trying. — Surely there is no kind 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 227 

of government, constitution, revolution, social ap- 
paratus or arrangement, that I know of in this 
world, so promising to one's scientific curiosity as 
this. The man of intellect at the top of affairs : 
this is the aim of all constitutions and revolutions, 5 
if they have any aim. For the man of true intel- 
lect, as I assert and believe always, is the noble- 
hearted man withal, the true, just, humane and 
valiant man. Get him for governor, all is got; 
fail to get him, though you had Constitutions plen- 10 
tiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in every 
village, there is nothing yet got ! — 

These things look strange, truly; and are not 
such as we commonly speculate upon. But we are 
fallen into strange times ; these things will require 15 
to be speculated upon; to be rendered practicable, 
to be in some way put in practice. These, and 
many others. On all hands of us, there is the an- 
nouncement, audible enough, that the old Empire 
of Routine has ended ; that to say a thing has long 20 
been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The 
things which have been are fallen into decay, are 
fallen into incompetence ; large masses of mankind, 
in every society of our Europe, are no longer capa- 
ble of living at all by the things which have been. 25 
When millions of men can no longer by their ut- 
most exertion gain food for themselves, and ^the 
third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short 
of third-rate potatoes,' the things which have 
been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves ! — 30 
I will now quit this of the organisation of Men of 
Letters. 



228 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those 
Literary Heroes of ours was not the want of organi- 
sation for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one ; 
out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils 

5 for the Literary Man, and for all men, had, as from 
their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man 
of Letters had to travel without highway, compan- 
ionless, through an inorganic chaos, — and to leave 
his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial 

10 contribution towards pushing some highway through 
it : this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted 
and paralysed, he might have put-up with, might 
have considered to be but the common lot of 
Heroes. His fatal misery was the spiritual paraly- 

15 sis, so we may name it, of the Age in which his 
life lay ; whereby his life too, do what he might, 
was half -paralysed ! The Eighteenth was a Scepti- 
cal Century ; in which little word there is a whole 
Pandora's Box of miseries. Scepticism means not 

20 intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt ; all sorts 
of mfidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Per- 
haps, in few centuries that one could specify since 
the world began, was a life of Heroism more diflB.- 
cult for a man. That was not an age of Eaith, — 

25 an age of Heroes ! The very possibility of Hero- 
ism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the 
minds of all. Heroism was gone forever ; Trivial- 
ity, Pormulism and Commonplace were come for- 
ever. The ' age of miracles ' had been, or perhaps 

30 had not been ; but it was not any longer. An effete 
world ; wherein Wonder, Greatness, Godhood could 
not now dwell ; — in one word, a godless world ! 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 229 

How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, 
in this time, — compared not with the Christian 
Shakspeares and Miltons, bnt with tlie old Pagan 
Skalds, with any species of believing men! The 
living Tree Igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic 5 
waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted as 
Hela, has died-ont into the clanking of a World-MA- 
CHiisrE. ^ Tree ' and ' Machine ' : contrast these two 
things. I, for my share, declare the world to be no 
machine ! I say that it does not go by wheel-and- lo 
pinion ^ motives,' self-interests, checks, balances ; 
that there is something far other in it than the 
clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary ma- 
jorities ; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine 
at all ! — The old Norse Heathen had a truer notion 15 
of God's-world than these poor Machine-Sceptics : 
the old Heathen ISTorse were sincere men. But for 
these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. 
Half-truth and hearsay was called truth. Truth, 
for most men, meant plausibility 5 to be measured 20 
by the number of votes you could get. They had 
lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of 
what sincerity was. How many Plausibilities ask- 
ing, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended 
virtue. What ! am not I sincere ? Spiritual Paraly- 25 
sis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was 
the characteristic of that century. For the com- 
mon man, unless happily he stood helow his century 
and belonged to another prior one, it was impossi- 
ble to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay buried, un- 30 
conscious, under these baleful influences. To the 
strongest man, only with infinite struggle and con- 



230 LECTURES ON HEROES 

fusion was it possible to work himself half -loose ; 
and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical 
way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero ! 
Scepticism is the name we give to all this ; as the 
5 chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Con- 
cerning which so much were to be said ! It would 
take many Discourses, not a small fraction of one 
Discourse, to state what one feels about that Eigh- 
teenth Century and its ways. As indeed this, and 

10 the like of this, which we now call Scepticism, is 
precisely the black malady and life-foe, against 
which all teaching and discoursing since man's 
life began has directed itself: the battle of Be- 
lief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! 

15 Neither is it in the way of crimination that one 
wonld wish to speak. Scepticism for that century, 
we must consider as the decay of old ways of be- 
lieving, the preparation afar off for new better and 
wider ways, — an inevitable thing. We will not 

20 blame men for it ; we will lament their hard fate. 
We will understand that destruction of old forms 
is not destruction of everlasting substances ; that 
Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, 
is not an end but a beginning. 

25 The other day speaking, without prior purpose 
that way, of Bentham's theory of man and man's 
life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one than 
Mahomet's. I am bound to say, now when it is 
once uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion. 

30 Not that one would mean offence against the man 
Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe 
him. Bentham himself, and even the creed of 



THE RERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 231 

Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy of 
praise. It is a determinate being what all the 
world, in a cowardly half-and-half manner, was 
tending to be. Let ns have the crisis ; we shall 
either have death or the cure. I call this gross, 5 
steam-engine Utilitarianism an approach towards 
new Faith. It was a laying-down of cant ; a say- 
ing to oneself: "Well then, this world is a dead 
iron machine, the god of it Gravitation and selfish 
Hunger ; let us see what, by checking and balanc- 10 
ing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, can 
be made of it ! " Benthamism has something com- 
plete, manful, in such fearless committal of itself 
to what it finds true ; you may call it Heroic, 
though a Heroism with its eyes put out ! It is the 15 
culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what 
lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man's 
whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It 
seems to me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip- 
believers of it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they 20 
have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an eye- 
less Heroism: the Human Species, like a hapless 
blinded Samson grinding in the Philistine Mill, 
clasps convulsively the pillars of its Mill ; brings 
huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. 25 
Of Bentham I meant to say no harm. 

But this I do say, and would wish all men to 
know and lay to heart, that he who discerns noth- 
ing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the 
fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe al- 30 
together. That all Godhood should vanish out of 
men's conception of this Universe seems to me pre- 



232 LECTURES ON HEROES 

cisely the most brutal error, — I Avill not disparage 
Heathenism by calling it a Heathen error, — that 
men could fall into. . It is not true ; it is false at 
the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will 

5 think wrong about all things in the world ; this 
original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he 
can form. One might call it the most lamentable 
of Delusions, — not forgetting Witchcraft itself ! 
Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil; but 

10 this worships a dead iron Devil ; no God, not even 
a Devil ! — Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, 
drops thereby out of life. There remains every- 
where in life a despicable caput-mortuum ; the me- 
chanical hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a 

15 man act heroically ? The ' Doctrine of Motives ' 
will teach him that it is, under more or less dis- 
guise, nothing but a wretched love of Pleasure, fear 
of Pain ; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of 
whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact 

20 of man's life. Atheism, in brief ; — which does in- 
deed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is 
become spiritually a paralytic man ; this godlike 
Universe a dead mechanical steam-engine, all work- 
ing by motives, checks, balances, and I know not 

25 what ; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some 
Phalaris'-BuU of his own contriving, he the poor 
Phalaris sits miserably dying ! 

Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's 
mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, 

30 that of getting to believe ; — indescribable, as all 
vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not 
that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see 



TBE HERO AS MAN Of LETTERS 23^ 

into something, give ns clear belief and understand- 
ing about sometliing, wliereon we are then to pro- 
ceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. 
Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first 
thing we find, and straightway believe that ! All 5 
manner of doubt, inquiry, o-Kei/^i? as it is named, 
about all manner of objects, dwells in every reason- 
able mind. It is the mystic working of the mind, 
on the object it is getting to know and believe. 
Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the lo 
tree from its hidden roots. But now if, even on 
common things, we require that a man keep his 
doubts silent, and not babble of them till they in 
some measure become affirmations or denials ; how 
much more in regard to the highest things, impos- 15 
sible to speak-of in words at all! That a man 
parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating 
and logic (which means at best only the manner 
of telling us your thought, your belief or disbelief, 
about a thing) is the triumph and true work of 20 
what intellect he has : alas, this is as if you should 
overturn the tree, and instead of green boughs, 
leaves and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned 
up into the air, — and no growth, only death and 
misery going-on ! 25 

For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual 
only ; it is moral also ; a chronic atrophy and dis- 
ease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing 
something; not by debating and arguing about 
many things. A sad case for him when all that 30 
he can manage to believe is something he can 
button in his pocket, and with one or the other 



234 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will 
not get. We call those ages in which he gets so 
low the mournfnlest, sickest and meanest of all 
ages. The world's heart is palsied, sick : how can 
5 any limb of it be whole ? Genuine Acting ceases 
in all departments of the world's work; dextrous 
Similitude of Acting begins. The world's wages 
are pocketed, the world's work is not done. Heroes 
have gone-out ; Quacks have come-in. Accordingly, 

10 what Century, since the end of the E-oman world, 
which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and 
universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as 
that Eighteenth ? Consider them, with their tumid 
sentimental vapouring about virtue, benevolence, 

15 — the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the 
head of them ! Few men were without quackery ; 
they had got to consider it a necessary ingredi- 
ent and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave 
Chatham himself, comes down to the House, all 

20 wrapt and bandaged ; he ' has crawled out in great 
bodily suffering,' and so on; — forgets, says Walpole, 
that he is acting the sick man ; in the fire of debate, 
snatches his arm from the sling, and oratorically 
swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives 

25 the strangest mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all 
along. For indeed the world is full of dupes ; and 
you have to gain the world's suffrage ! How the 
duties of the world will be done in that case, 
what quantities of error, which means failure, 

30 which means sorrow and misery, to some and to 
many, will gradually accumulate in all provinces 
of the world's business, we need not compute. 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 235 

It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the 
heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a 
Sceptical World. An insincere world; a godless 
untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, 
that the whole tribe of social pestilences, French 5 
devolutions. Chartisms, and what not, have derived 
their being, — their chief necessity to be. This 
must alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially 
alter. My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable 
consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, 10 
is that this is altering. Here and there one does 
now find a man who knows, as of old, that this 
world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity ; 
that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic ; 
and that the world is alive, instinct with Godhood, 15 
beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of 
days ! One man once knowing this, many men, all 
men, must by and by come to know it. It lies 
there clear, for whosoever will take the spectacles 
off his eyes and honestly look, to know ! For such 20 
a man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed 
Products, is already past ; a new century is already 
come. The old unblessed Products and Perform- 
ances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, pre- 
paring speedily to vanish. To this and the other 25 
noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole 
world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, compos- 
edly stepping aside : Thou art not true ; thou art 
not extant, only semblant ; go thy way ! — Yes, 
hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other 30 
unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even 
rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Cen- 



236 LECfuitEs ON Heroes 

tury is but an exception, — such as now and then 
occurs. I prophesy that the world will once more 
become sincere ; a believing world ; with many 
Heroes in it, a heroic world ! It will then be a 
5 victorious world ; never till then. 

Or indeed what of the world and its victories ? 
Men speak too much about the world. Each one 
of us here, let the world go how it will, and be 
victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of 

10 his own to lead ? One Life ; a little gleam of Time 
between two Eternities ; no second chance to us 
forevermore ! It were well for us to live not as 
fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The 
world's being saved will not save us ; nor the 

15 world's being lost destroy us. We should look to 
ourselves: there is great merit here in the ^duty 
of staying at home ' ! And, on the whole, to say 
truth, I never heard of ' worlds ' being ^ saved ' in 
any other way. That mania of saving worlds is 

20 itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its 
windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too 
far. For the saving of the world I will trust con- 
fidently to the Maker of the world; and look a 
little to my own saving, which I am more compe- 

25 tent to ! — In brief, for the world's sake, and for 

our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, 

Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their 

poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone. — 

Now it was under such conditions, in those times 

30 of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. 
Times in which there was properly no truth in life. 
Old truths had fallen nigh dumb ; the new lay yet 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 237 

h-idden, not trying to speak. That Man's Life here 
below was a Sincerity and Eact, and would forever 
continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of 
the world, had yet dawned. No intimation; not 
even any French Eevolution, — which we define to 5 
be a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in hell- 
fire ! How different was the Luther's pilgrimage, 
with its assured goal, from the Johnson's, girt with 
mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, 
unintelligible! Mahomet's Formulas were of ^wood lo 
waxed and oiled,' and could be burnt out of one's 
way : poor Johnson's were far more difficult to 
burn. — The strong man will ever find ivorJc, which 
means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his 
strength. But to make-out a victory, in those cir- 15 
cumstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, 
was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not ob- 
struction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and 
Fourpence-halfpenny a day ; not this alone ; but 
the light of his own soul was taken from him. No 20 
landmark on the Earth ; and, alas, what is that to 
having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not 
wonder that none of those Three men rose to vic- 
tory. That they fought truly is the highest praise. 
"With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, 25 
if not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, the 
Tombs of three fallen Heroes ! They fell for us 
too ; making a way for us. There are the moun- 
tains which they hurled abroad in their confused 
War of the Giants ; under which, their strength 30 
and life spent, they now lie buried. 



238 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

I have already written of these three Literary 
Heroes, expressly or incidentally ; what I suppose 
is known to most of you ; what need not be spoken 
or written a second time. They concern us here 
5 as the singular Prophets of that singular age ; for 
such they virtually were ; and the aspect they and 
their world exhibit, under this point of view, might 
lead us into reflections enough! I call them, all 
three, Genuine Men more or less ; faithfully, for 

10 most part unconsciously, struggling, to be genuine, 
and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of 
things. This to a degree that eminently distin- 
guishes them from the poor artificial mass of their 
contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be 

15 considered as Speakers, in some measure, of the 
everlasting truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. 
By lSI"ature herself a noble necessity was laid on 
them to be so. They were men of such magnitude 
that they could not live on unrealities, — clouds, 

20 froth and all inanity gave- way under them : there 
was no footing for them but on firm earth ; no rest 
or regular motion for them, if they got not footing 
there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nat- 
ure once more in an age of Artifice; once more, 

25 Original Men. 

As for Johnson, I have always considered him to 
be, by nature, one of oar great English souls. A 
strong and noble man ; so much left undeveloped in 
him to the last : in a kindlier element what might 

30 he not have been, — Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler ! 

» On the whole, a man must not complain of his ' ele- 
ment,' of his ' time,' or the like ; it is thriftless 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 239 

work doing so. His time is bad : well then, lie is 
there to make it better! — Johnson's youth was 
poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it 
does not seem possible that, in any the favourablest 
outward circumstances, Johnson's life could have 5 
been other than a painful one. The world might 
have had more of profitable work out of him, or 
less ; but his effort against the world's work could 
never have been a light one. Nature, in return for 
his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element 10 
of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and 
the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably 
connected with each other. At all events, poor 
Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypo- 
chondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a 15 
Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, 
which shoots-in on him dull incurable misery : the 
Nessus'-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own 
natural skin ! In this manner he had to live. 
Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with 20 
his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of 
thoughts ; stalking mournful as a stranger in this 
Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he 
could come at : school-languages and other merely 
grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better ! 25 
The largest soul that was in all England ; and pro- 
vision made for it of ^ fourpence-halfpenny a day.' 
Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. One 
remembers always that story of the shoes at Ox- 
ford : the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College 30 
Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his 
shoes worn-out ; how the charitable Gentleman 



240 LECTUUES ON HEROES 

Commoner secretly places a new pair at liis door ; 
and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at 
tliem near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts, — 
pitches them out of the window ! Wet feet, mud, 
5 frost, hunger or what you will ; but not beggary : 
we cannot stand beggary ! Eude stubborn self-help 
here ; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused 
misery and want, yet of nobleness and manful- 
ness withal. It is a type of the man's life, this 

10 pitching-away of the shoes. An original man; — 
not a secondhand, borrowing or begging man. Let 
us stand on our own basis, at any rate ! On such 
shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and mud, 
if you will, but honestly on that ; — on the reality 

15 and substance which Nature gives us, not on the 
semblance, on the thing she has given another than 
us! — 

And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood 
and self-help, was there ever soul more tenderly 

20 affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really 
higher than he ? Great souls are always loyally 
submissive, reverent to what is over them ; only 
small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a 
better proof of what I said the other day. That the 

25 sincere man was by nature the obedient man ; that 
only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedi- 
ence to the Heroic. The essence of originality is 
not that it be new : Johnson believed altogether in 
the old; he found the old opinions credible for 

30 him, fit for him ; and in a right heroic manner 
lived under them. He is well worth study in re- 
gard to that. Eor we are to say that Johnson was 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 241 

far other tlian a mere man of words and formulas ; 
he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by the 
old formulas ; the happier was it for him that he 
could so stand: but in all formulas that he could 
stand by, there needed to be a most genuine sub- 5 
stance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, 
so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, 
Hearsays, the great Pact of this Universe glared 
in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, 
divine-infernal, upon this man too ! How he har- 10 
monised his Pormulas with it, how he managed 
at all under such circumstances: that is a 
thing worth seeing. A thing Ho be looked at 
with reverence, with pity, with awe.' That 
Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson 15 
still worshipped in the era of Voltaire, is to me a 
venerable place. 

It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speak- 
ing still in some sort from the heart of Nature, 
though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson 20 
was a Prophet. Are not all dialects 'artificial'? 
Artificial things are not all false ; — nay every 
true Product of Nature will infallibly shape it- 
self ; we may say all artificial things are, at the 
starting of them, true. What we call ' Pormulas ' 25 
are not in their origin bad ; they are indispensa- 
bly good. Pormula is method, habitude; found 
wherever man is found. Pormulas fashion them- 
selves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading 
towards some sacred or high object, whither many 30 
men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of 
heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing 



242 LECTURES ON HEROES 

somewhat, — were it of uttering Ms soul's reverence 
for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his 
fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a 
poet; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought 
5 that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is 
his way of doing that ; these are his footsteps, the 
beginning of a ' Path.' And now see : the second 
man travels naturally in the footsteps of his fore- 
goer, it is the easiest method. In the footsteps of 

10 his f oregoer ; yet with improvements, with changes 
where such seem good ; at all events with enlarge- 
ments, the Path ever ividening itself as more travel 
it; — till at last there is a broad Highway whereon 
the whole world may travel and drive. While 

15 there remains a City or Shrine, or any Eeality to 
drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be 
, right welcome ! When the City is gone, we will 
forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institu- 
tions, Practices, Eegulated Things in the world 

20 have come into existence, and gone out of existence. 
Formulas all begin by being full of substance ; you 
may call them the ski7i, the articulation into shape, 
into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already 
there : they had not been there otherwise. Idols, 

25 as we said, are not idolatrous till they become 
doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much 
as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is 
ignorant withal of the high significance of true 
Formulas ; that they were, and will ever be, the in- 

30 dispensablest furniture of our habitation in this 

world. 

Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his ' sin- 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 243 

cerity.' He has no suspicion of liis being particu- 
larly sincere, — of his being particularly anything ! 
A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or 'scholar' 
as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest 
livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live — 5 
without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in 
him. He does not ' engrave Truth on his watch- 
seal ' ; no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, 
works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of 
it once more. The man whom Nature has ap- lo 
pointed to do great things is, first of atl, furnished 
with that openness to Nature which renders him 
incapable of being insincere ! To his large, open, 
deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact : all hearsay is 
hearsay ; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery 15 
of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even 
though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever 
present to him, — fearful and wonderful, on this 
hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity ; 
unrecognised, because never questioned or capable 20 
of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Na- 
poleon : all the Great Men I ever heard-of have this 
as the primary material of them. Innumerable 
commonplace men are debating, are talking every- 
where their commonplace doctrines, which they 25 
have learned by logic, by rote, at secondhand : to 
that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must 
have truth ; truth which he feels to be true. How 
shall he stand otherwise ? His whole soul, at all 
moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no 30 
standing. He is under the noble necessity of being 
true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world 



244 LECTURES ON HEROES 

is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was : but I 
recognise the everlasting element of heart-smceW^y 
in both ; and see with pleasure how neither of them 
remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as chaff 
5 sown; in both of them is something which the 
seed-field will groiv. 

Johnson was a Prophet to his people ; preached 
a Gospel to them, — as all like him always do. 
The highest Gospel he preached we may describe 

10 as a kind of Moral Prudence : ' in a world where 
much is to be done, and little is to be known,' see 
how you will do it \ A thing well worth preaching. 
' A world where much is to be done, and little is to 
be known : ' do not sink yourselves in boundless 

15 bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched god- 
forgetting Unbelief ; — you were miserable then, 
powerless, mad : how could you do or work at all ? 
Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught; — 
coupled, theoretically and practically, with this 

20 other great Gospel, ' Clear your mind of Cant ! ' 
Have no trade with Cant : stand on the cold mud 
in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own real 
torn shoes : ' that will be better for you,' as Ma- 
homet says ! I call this, I call these two things 

25 joined together ^ a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps 
that was possible at that time. 

Johnson's Writings, which once had such cur- 
rency and celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned 
by the young generation. It is not wonderful ; 

30 Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete : but 
his style of thinking and of living, we may hope, 
will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 245 

Books tlie indisputablest traces of a great intellect 
and great heart; — ever welcome, under what ob- 
structions and perversions soever. They are sincere 
words, those of his ; he means things by them. A 
wondrous buckram style, — the best he could get 5 
to then ; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or 
rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown 
obsolete now; sometimes a tumid size of phrase- 
ology not in proportion to the contents of it : all 
this you will put-up with. For the phraseology, lo 
tumid or not, has always something within it. So 
many beautiful styles and books, with nothing in 
them ; — a man is a malefactor to the world who 
writes such ! They are the avoidable kind ! — Had 
Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, one might 15 
have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. 
Looking to its clearness of definition, its general 
solidity, honesty, insight and successful method, it 
may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There 
is in it a kind of architectural nobleness ; it stands 20 
there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, 
symmetrically complete : you judge that a true 
Builder did it. 

One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted 
to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, glut- 25 
tonous creature ; and was so in many senses. Yet 
the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever re- 
main noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch 
Laird, the most conceited man of his time, ap- 
proaching in such awestruck attitude the great 30 
dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: 
it is a genuine reverence for Excellence ; a worship 



246 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor 
worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would 
seem, exist always, and a certain worship of them ! 
We will also take the liberty to deny altogether 

5 that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a 
Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not 
the Hero's blame, but the Valet's : that his soul, 
namely, is a mean valet-soul ! He expects his Hero 
to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured 

10 step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding 
before him. It should stand rather, No man can 
be a Grand-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre. 
Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there 
is left nothing but a poor forked radish with a 

15 head fantastically carved ; — admirable to no valet. 
The Yalet does not know a Hero when he sees him ! 
Alas, no : it requires a kind of Hero to do that ; — 
and one of the world's wants, in this as in other 
senses, is for most part want of such. 

20 On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's 
admiration was well bestowed ; that he could have 
found no soul in all England so worthy of bending 
down before ? Shall we not say, of this great 
mournful Johnson too, that he guided his dififi.cult 

25 confused existence wisely ; led it well, like a right- 
valiant man ? That waste chaos of Authorship by 
trade ; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion 
and politics, in life-theory and life-practice ; in his 
poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body 

30 and the rusty coat : he made it do for him, like a 
brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the 
Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all 



THE HEEO AS MAN OF LETTERS 247 

need to have : with his eye set on that, he would 
change his course for nothing in these confused 
vortices of the lower sea of Time. ' To the Spirit 
^ of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no 
' wise strike his flag.' Brave old Samuel : ultimus 5 
Romanorum ! 

Of Eousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so 
much. He is not what I call a strong man. A mor- 
bid, excitable, spasmodic man ; at best, intense rather 
than strong. He had not ' the talent of Silence,' an lo 
invaluable talent ; which few Frenchmen, or indeed 
men of any sort in these times, excel in! The 
suffering man ought really 'to consume his own 
smoke ' ; there is no good in emitting smoke till 
you have made it into Jire, — which, in the meta- 15 
phorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becom- 
ing ! Eousseau has not depth or width, not calm 
force for difficulty ; the first characteristic of true 
greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehe- 
mence and rigidity strength ! A man is not strong 20 
who takes convulsion-fits ; though six men cannot 
hold him then. He that can walk under the 
heaviest weight without staggering, he is the strong 
man. We need forever, especially in these loud- 
shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. A 25 
man who cannot hold his peace, till the time come 
for speaking and acting, is no right man. 

Poor Eousseau's face is to me expressive of him. 
A high but narrow contracted intensity in it : bony 
brows ; deep, strait-set eyes, in which there is 30 
something bewildered-looking, — bewilcftred, peer- 



248 LECTURES ON HEROES 

ing with lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, 
even ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism 
against that ; something mean, plebeian there, re- 
deemed only by intensity : the face of what is called 
5 a Fanatic, — a sadly contracted Hero ! We name 
him here because, with all his drawbacks, and they 
are many, he has the first and chief characteristic 
of a Hero: he is heartily m earnest. In earnest, 
if ever man was ; as none of these French Phi- 

10 losophers were. Nay, one would say, of an earnest- 
ness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather 
feeble nature ; and which indeed in the end drove 
him into the strangest incoherences, almost delira- 
tions. There had come, at last, to be a kind of 

15 madness in him : his Ideas possessed him like 
demons ; hurried him so about, drove him over 
steep places ! — 

The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we 
easily name by a single word, Egoism; which is 

20 indeed the source and summary of all faults and 
miseries whatsoever. He had not perfected him- 
self into victory over mere Desire ; a mean Hunger, 
in many sorts, was still the motive principle of 
him. I am afraid he was a very vain man ; hungry 

25 for the praises of men. You remember Genlis's 

r: experience of him. She took Jean Jacques to the 
Theatre ; he bargaining for a strict incognito, — 
"He would not be seen there for the world ! " 
The curtain did happen nevertheless to be drawn 

30 aside: the Pit recognised Jean Jacques, but took 
no great notice of him ! He expressed the bitterest 
indignatiorP; gloomed all evening, spake no other 



THE HEBO AS MAN OF LETTERS 249 

than surly words. The glib Countess remained 
entirely convinced that his anger was not at being 
seen, but at not being applauded when seen. How 
the whole nature of the man is poisoned ; nothing 
but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce moody ways ! 5 
He could not live with anybody. A man of some 
rank from the country, Avho visited him often, and 
used to sit with him, expressing all reverence and 
affection for him, comes one day, finds Jean Jacques 
full of the sourest unintelligible humour. " Mon- 10 
sieur," said Jean Jacques,, with flaming eyes, "I 
know why you come here. You come to see what 
a poor life I lead ; how little is in my poor pot that 
is boiling there. Well, look into the pot ! There is 
half a pound of meat, one carrot and three onions ; 15 
that is all : go and tell the whole world that, if you 
like, Monsieur ! " — A man of this sort was far gone. 
The whole world got itself suj)plied with anecdotes, 
for light laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, 
from these perversions and contortions of poor 20 
Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not laugh- 
ing or theatrical ; too real to him ! The contortions 
of a dying gladiator : the crowded amphitheatre 
looks-on with entertainment: but the gladiator is 
in agonies and dying. 25 

And yet this Eousseau, as we say, with, his 
passionate appeals to Mothers, with his Contrat- 
social, with his celebrations of Nature, even of 
savage life in Nature, did once more touch upon 
^Reality, struggle toAvards Eeality; was doing the 30 
function of a Prophet to his Time. As he could, 
and as the Time could ! Strangely through all that 



250 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

defacement, degradation and almost madness, there 
is in the inmost heart of poor Ronsseau a spark of 
real heavenly fire. Once more, out of the element 
of that withered mocking Philosophism, Scepticism 
5 and Persiflage, there has arisen in this man the 
ineradicable feeling and knowledge that this Life 
of ours is true; not a Scepticism, Theorem or 
Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Eeality. Nature 
had made that revelation to him ; had ordered him 

10 to speak it out. He got it spoken out ; if not well 
and clearly, then ill and dimly, — as clearly as he 
could. Nay what are all errors and perversities of 
his, even those stealings of ribbons, aimless con- 
fused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will in- 

15 terpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement 
and staggerings to and fro of a man sent on an 
errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet 
find ? Men are led by strange ways. One should 
have tolerance for a man, hope of him ; leave him 

20 to try yet what he will do. While life lasts, hope 
lasts for every man. 

Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated 
still among his countrymen, I do not say much. 
His Books, like himself, are what I call unhealthy ; 

25 not the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality 
in E/Ousseau. Combined with such an intellectual 
gift as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous 
attractiveness : but they are not genuinely poetical. 
Not white sunlight: something operatic; a kind of 

30 rosepink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or 
rather it is universal, among the French since his 
time. Madame de Stael has something of itj St. 



THE HEBO AS MAN OF LETTERS 251 

Pierre ; and down onwards to the present astonish- 
ing convulsionary ' Literature of Desperation/ it is 
everywhere abundant. That same rosepink is not 
the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a Goethe, 
even at a Walter Scott ! He who has once seen 5 
into this, has seen the difference of the True from 
the Sham-True, and will discriminate them ever 
afterwards. 

We had to observe in Johnson how much good 
a Prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganisa- 10 
tions, can accomplish for the world. In Kousseau 
we are called to look rather at the fearful amount 
of evil which, under such disorganisation, may ac- 
company the good. Historically it is a most preg- 
nant spectacle, that of Eoiisseau. Banished into 15 
Paris garrets, in the gloomy company of his own 
Thoughts and Necessities there ; driven from post 
to pillar ; fretted, exasperated till the heart of him 
went mad, he had grown to feel deeply that the 
world was not his friend nor the world's law. It 20 
was expedient, if anyway possible, that such a 
man should 7iot have been set in flat hostility with 
the world. He could be cooped into garrets, laughed 
at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild-beast in 
his cage ; — but he could not be hindered from 25 
setting the world on fire. The French Revolution 
found its Evangelist in Eousseau. His semi-de- 
lirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, 
the preferability of the savage to the civilised, and 
suchlike, helped well to produce a whole delirium 30 
in France generally. True, you may well ask. 
What could the world, the governors of the world, 



252 LECTURES ON HEROES 

do with sucli a man ? Difficult to say what the 
governors of the world could do with him ! What 
he could do with them is unhappily clear enough, 
— guillotine a great many of them ! Enough now 
5 of E-ousseau. 

It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, 
unbelieving, secondhand Eighteenth Century,- that 
of a Hero starting up, among the artificial paste- 
board figures and productions, in the guise of a 

10 Eobert Burns. Like a little well in the rocky 

desert places, — like a sudden splendour of Heaven 

in the artificial Vauxhall ! People knew not what 

to make of it. They took it for a piece of the 

• Yauxhall fire- work ; alas, it let itself be so taken, 

15 though struggling half-blindly, as in bitterness of 
death, against that ! Perhaps no man had such a 
false reception from his fellow-men. Once more a 
very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the 
sun. 

20 The tragedy of Burns' s life is known to all of 
you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between 
place held and place merited constitute perverse- 
ness of lot for a man, no lot could be more perverse 
than Burns's. Among those secondhand acting- 

25 figures, mimes for most part, of the Eighteenth 
Century, once more a giant Original Man; one of 
those men who reach down to the perennial Deeps, 
who take rank with the Heroic among men : and 
he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest 

30 soul of all the British lands came among us in the 
shape of a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. 



TBE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 25o 

His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various 
things ; did not succeed in any ; was involved in 
continual difficulties. The Steward, Factor as the 
Scotch call him, used to send letters and threaten- 
ings, Burns says, ^ which threw us all into tears.' 5 
The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his 
brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of 
whom Robert was one ! In this Earth, so wide 
otherwise, no shelter for them. The letters 'threw 
us all into tears ' : figure it. The brave Father, I lo 
say always ; — a silent Hero and Poet ; without whom 
the son had never been a speaking one ! Burns's 
Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, learnt 
what good society was ; but declares that in no 
meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse ir» 
than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor 
'seven acres of nursery-ground,' — not that, nor 
the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he 
tried to get a living by, would prosper with him ; 
he had a sore unequal battle all his days. But he 20 
stood to it valiantly ; a wise, faithful, unconquerable 
man ; — swallowing-down how many sore sufferings 
daily into silence ; fighting like an unseen Hero, 
— nobody publishing newspaper paragraphs about 
his nobleness ; voting pieces of plate to him ! How- 25 
ever, he was not lost : nothing is lost. Bobert is 
there ; the outcome of him, — and indeed of many 
generations of such as him. 

This Burns appeared under every disadvantage : 
uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; 30 
and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic spe- 
cial dialect, known only to a small province of the 



254 LECTURES ON HEROES 

country lie lived in. Had he written, even what he 
did write, in the general language of England, I 
doubt not he had already become universally recog- 
nised as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest 
5 men. That he should have tempted so many to 
penetrate through the rough husk of that dialect of 
his, is proof that there lay something far from com- 
mon within it. He has gained a certain recognition, 
and is continuing to do so over all quarters of our 

10 wide Saxon world : wheresoever a Saxon dialect is 
spoken, it begins to be understood, by personal in- 
spection of this and the other, that one of the most 
considerable Saxon men of the Eighteenth Century 
was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert Burns. 

15 Yes, I will say, here too was a piece of the right 
Saxon stuff : strong as the Harz-rock, rooted in the 
depths of the world ; — rock, yet with wells of liv- 
ing softness in it ! A wild impetuous whirlwind of 
passion and faculty slumbered quiet there ; such 

20 heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. A 
noble rough genuineness ; homely, rustic, honest ; 
true simplicity of strength ; with its lightning-fire, 
with its soft dewy pity ; — like the old Norse Thor, 
the Peasant-god ! — 

25 Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and 
worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, 
in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest 
of speech ; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense 
and heart ; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting 

30 peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards 
knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth 
('fond gaillard/ as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), a 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTEBS 255 

primal-element of sunshine and joy fulness, coupled ■ 
with. Ms other deep and earnest qualities, is one of 
the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A 
large fund of Hope dwells in him ; spite of his 
tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He 5 
shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth 
victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking 
' dew-drops from his mane ' ; as the swift-bounding 
horse, that ' laughs at the shaking of the spear.' — But 
indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns's, are 10 
they not the outcome properly of warm generous 
affection, — such as is the beginning of all to every 
man ? 

You would think it strange if I called Burns the 
most gifted British soul we had in all that century 15 
of his : and yet I believe the day is coming when 
there will be little danger in saying so. His writ- 
ings, all that he did under such obstructions, are 
only a poor fragment of him. Professor Stewart 
remarked very justly, what indeed is true of all 20 
Poets good for much, that his poetry was not any 
particular faculty ; but the general result of a 
naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself 
in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed in conversa- 
tion, are the theme of all that ever heard him. All 25 
kinds of gifts : from the gracefulest utterances of 
courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate speech ; 
loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, 
laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight ; all was in 
him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man 30 
whose speech 'led them off their feet.' This is 
beautiful : but still more beautiful that which Mr. 



256 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Lockhart has recorded, which. I have more than 
once alluded to, How the waiters and ostlers at inns 
would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear 
this man speak ! Waiters and ostlers : — they too 
5 were men, and here was a man ! I have heard 
much about his speech ; but one of the best things 
I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable 
gentleman long familiar with him. That it was 
speech distinguished by always having something in 

10 it. "He spoke rather little than much," this old 
man told me ; " sat rather silent in those early days, 
as in the company of persons above him ; and always 
when he did speak, it was to throw new light on 
the matter." I know not why any one should ever 

15 speak otherwise ! — But if we look at his general 
force of soul, his healthy robustness everyway, the 
rugged downrightness, penetration, generous valour 
and manf ulness that was in him, — where shall we 
readily find a better-gifted man ? 

20 Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, 
I sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to 
resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They 
differ widely in vesture ; yet look at them intrinsi- 
cally. There is the same burly thick-necked strength 

25 of body as of soul ; — built, in both cases, on what 
the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, 
by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau 
has much more of bluster ; a noisy, forward, unrest- 
ing man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is 

30 veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority 
of vision. The thing that he says is worth remem- 
bering. It is a flash of insight into some object or 



THE HERO AS 'MAN OF LETTERS 257 

other : so do both these men speak. The same 
raging passions ; capable too in both of manifesting 
themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, 
wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity : these 
were in both. The types of the two men are not 5 
dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated 
in National Assemblies; politicised, as few could. 
Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in 
capture of smuggling schooners in the Sol way Prith ; 
in keeping silence over so much, where no good 10 
speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible : this 
might have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze and the 
like ; and made itself visible to all men, in manag- 
ing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable 
epochs ! But they said to him reprovingly, his 15 
Official Superior said, and wrote : ' You are to work, 
not think.' Of your tJdnking-fsiGwltj, the greatest 
in this land, we have no need; you are to gauge 
beer there ; for that only are you wanted. Very 
notable ; — and worth mentioning, though we know 20 
what is to be said and answered ! As if Thought, 
Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all places 
and situations of the world, precisely the thing that 
was wanted. The fatal man, is he not always the 
unthinking man, the man who cannot think and 25 
see; but only grope, and hallucinate, and missee the 
nature of the thing he works with ? He missees it, 
mistakes it as we say ; takes it for one thing, and it 
is another thing, — and leaves him standing like a 
Futility there ! He is the fatal man ; unutterably 30 
fatal, put in the high places of men. — " Why com- 
plain of this ? " say some : ^' Strength is mournfully 



258 LECTURES ON HEROES 

denied its arena 5 that was true from of old." Doubt- 
less ; and the worse for the arena, answer I ! Com- 
plaining profits little ; stating of the truth may 
profit. That a Europe, with its French Revolution 

5 just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except 
for gauging beer, — is a thing I, for one, cannot 
rejoice at ! — 

Once more we have to say here, that the chief 
quality of Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his 

10 Poetry, so in his Life. The Song he sings is not 
of fantasticalities ; it is of a thing felt, really there ; 
the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his 
Life generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what 
we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of 

15 savage sincerity, — not cruel, far from that ; but 
wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. In 
that sense, there is something of the savage in all 
great men. 

Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns ? Well ; these Men 

20 of Letters too were not without a kind of Hero- 
worship : but what a strange condition has that 
got into now ! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch 
inns, prying about the door, eager to catch any 
word that fell from Burns, were doing uncon- 

25 scious reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his 
Boswell for worshipper. Rousseau had worshippers 
enough ; princes calling on him in his mean garret ; 
the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor 
moonstruck man. For himself a most portentous 

30 contradiction ; the two ends of his life not to be 
brought into harmony. He sits at the tables of 
grandees ; and has to copy music for his own living. 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 259 

He cannot even get his music copied. '' By dint of 
dining out," says he, " I run the risk of dying by 
starvation at home." For his worshippers too a 
most questionable thing ! If doing Hero-worship 
well or badly be the test of vital wellbeing or ill- 5 
being to a generation, can we say that these gen- 
erations are very first-rate ? — And yet our heroic 
Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, 
or what you like to call them ; intrinsically there 
is no preventing it by any means whatever. The 10 
world has to obey him who thinks and sees in the 
world. The world can alter the manner of that ; 
can either have it as blessed continuous summer 
sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado, 
— with unspeakable difference of profit for the 15 
world ! The manner of it is very alterable ; the 
matter and fact of it is not alterable by any power 
under the sky. Light ; or, failing that, lightning : 
the world can take its choice. Not whether we call 
an Odin god, prophet, priest, or what we call him 5 20 
but whether we believe the word he tells us : there 
it all lies. If it be a true word, we shall have to 
believe it; believing it, we shall have to do it. 
What name or welcome we give him or it, is a point 
that concerns ourselves mainly. It, the new Truth, 25 
new deeper revealing of the Secret of this Universe, 
is verily of the nature of the message from on high ; 
and must and will have itself obeyed. — 

My last remark is on that notablest phasis of 
Burns's history, — his visit to Edinburgh. Often 30 
it seems to me as if his demeanour there were the 
highest proof he gave of what a fund of worth and 



260 LECTURES ON HEROES 

genuine manliood was in him. If we think of it, 
few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength 
of a man. So sudden ; all common Lionism, which 
ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It 

5 is as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not 
gradually, but at once from the Artillery Lieuten- 
ancy in the Eegiment La Fere. Burns, still only 
in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a 
ploughman ; he is flying to the West Indies to es- 

10 cape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined 
peasant, his wages seven pounds a year, and these 
gone from him: next month he is in the blaze of 
rank and beauty, handing down jewelled Duchesses 
to dinner ; the cynosure of all eyes ! Adversity is 

t5 sometimes hard upon a man ; but for one man who 

, can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will 

' stand adversity. I admire much the way in which 

Burns met all this. Perhaps no man one could 

point out, was ever so sorely tried, and so little for- 

20 got himself. Tranquil, mnastonished; not abashed, 
not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation: 
he feels that he there is the man Robert Burns ; 
that the ' rank is but the guinea-stamp ' ; that the 
celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show 

23 what man, not in the least make him a better or 
other man ! Alas, it may readily, unless he look 
to it, make him a worse man; a wretched inflated 
wind-bag, — inflated till he burst, and become a 
dead lion ; for whom, as some one has said, ' there 

30 is no resurrection of the body ' ; worse than a liv- 
ing dog ! — Burns is admirable here. 

And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, 



THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 261 

tliese Lioii-liuiiters were the ruin and death of 
Burns. It was they that rendered it impossible for 
him to live ! They gathered round him in his 
Farm ; hindered his industry ; no place was remote 
enough from them. He could not get his Lionism 5 
forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. 
He falls into discontents, into miseries, faults ; the 
world getting ever more desolate for him ; health, 
character, peace of mind all gone ; — solitary enough 
now. It is tragical to think of ! These men came lo 
but to see him ; it was out of no sympathy with 
him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a 
little amusement : they got their amusement ; — 
and the Hero's life went for it ! 

Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a 15 
kind of ' Light-chafers,' large Eire-flies, which peo- 
ple stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with 
at night. Persons of condition can thus travel 
with a pleasant radiance, which they much admire. 
Great honour to the Fire-flies ! But — ! — 20 



LECTURE VI 

THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON : 
MODERN REVOLUTIONISM 

[Friday, 22d May 1840] 

We come now to the last form of Heroism ; that 
which, we call Kingship. The Commander over 
Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordi- 
nated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find 

5 their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the 
most important of Great Men. He is practically 
the summary for us of all the various figures of 
Heroism ; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or 
of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, 

10 embodies itself here, to command over us, to fur- 
nish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us 
for the day and hour what we are to do. He is 
called Rex, Regulator, JRoi: our own name is still 
better ; King, Konning, which means Can-ning, 

15 Able-man. 

Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, 
questionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, 
present themselves here : on the most of which we 
must resolutely for the present forbear to speak at 

20 all. As Burke said that perhaps fair Trial by Jury 

262 



THE HERO AS KING 263 

was the soul of Government, and that all legisla- 
tion, administration, parliamentary debating, and 
the rest of it, went on, in ^ order to bring twelve 
impartial men into a jury-box ' ; — so, by much 
Stronger reason, may I say here, that the finding of 5 
your Ahleman and getting him invested with the 
symbols of ability, with dignity, worship (vjorth- 
ship), royalty, kinghood, or whatever we call it, 
so that he may actually have room to guide accord- 
ing to his faculty of doing it, — is the business, lo 
well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure 
whatsoever in this world ! Hustings-speeches, Par- 
liamentary motions, Eeform Bills, French Revolu- 
tions, all mean at heart this ; or else nothing. Find I 
in any country the Ablest JVian that exists there ; 15 
raise Jiim to the supreme place, and loyally rever- 
ence him : you have a perfect government for that 
country ; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, 
voting, constitution-building, or other machinery 
whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the per- 20 
feet state ; an ideal country. The Ablest Man ; he 
means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest 
Man : what he tells us to do must be precisely the 
wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow 
learn; — the thing which it will in all ways behove 25 
us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing 
doubting, to do ! Our doing and life were then, 
so far as government could regulate it, well regu- 
lated ; that were the ideal of constitutions. 

Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never 30 
be completely embodied in practice. Ideals must 
ever lie a very great way off ; and we will right 



264 LECTURES ON HEROES 

thankfully content ourselves witli any not intol- 
erable approximation thereto ! Let no man, as 
Schiller says, too querulously 'measure b}^ a scale 
of perfection the meagre product of reality' in this 

5 poor world of ours. We will esteem him no wise 
man; we will esteem him a sickly, discontented, 
foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is 
never to be forgotten that Ideals do exist; that 
if they be not approximated to at all, the whole 

10 matter goes to wreck ! Infallibly. No bricklayer 
builds a wall perfectly perpendicular, mathemati- 
cally this is not possible ; a certain degree of per- 
pendicularity suffices him; and he, like a good 
bricklayer, who must have done with his job, leaves 

15 it so. And yet if he sway too much from the per- 
pendicular ; above all, if he throw plummet and 
level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick 
heedless, just as it comes to hand — ! Such brick- 
layer, I think, is in a bad way. He has forgotten 

20 himself : but the Law of Gravitation does not for- 
get to act on him : he and his wall rush-down into 
confused welter of ruin ! — 

This is the history of all rebellions, French Revo- 
lutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. 

25 You have put the too ^Triable Man at the head of 
affairs ! The too ignoble, nnvaliant, fatuous man. 
You have forgotten that there is any rule, or nat- 
ural necessity whatever, of putting the Able Man 
there. Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. 

30 Unable Simulacrum of Ability, quack, in a word, 
must adjust himself with quack, in all manner of 
administration of human things ; — which accord- 



THE HERO AS KINC^ ^Q^ 

ingiy lie unadministered, fermenting into unmeas- 
ured masses of failure, of indigent misery : in the 
outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable 
millions stretch-out the hand for their due supply, 
and it is not there. The ' law of gravitation ' acts ; 5 
Nature's laws do none of them forget to act. The 
miserable millions burst-forth into Sansculottism, 
or some other sort of madness : bricks and brick- 
layer lie as a fatal chaos ! — : 

Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years 10 
ago or more, about the 'Divine right of Kings,' 
moulders unread now in the Public Libraries of 
,this country. Far be it from us to disturb the 
calm process by which it is disappearing harmlessly 
from the earth, in those repositories ! At the 15 
same time, not to let the immense rubbish go with- 
out leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind 
— I will say that it did mean something; some- 
thing true, which it is important for us and all 
men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever 20 
man you choose to lay hold of (by this or the other 
plan of clutching at him) ; and clapt a round piece 
of metal on the head of, and called King, — there 
straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that 
lie became a kind of god, and a Divinity inspired 25 
him with faculty and right to rule over you to all 
lengths : this, — what can we do with this but 
leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries ? 
But I will say withal, and that is what these 
Divine-right men meant. That in Kings, and in 30 
all human Authorities, and relations that men god- 
created can form among each other, there is verily 



266 LECTURES ON HEROES 

either a Divine E-iglit or else a Diabolic Wrong; 
one or the other of these two ! For it is false alto- 
gether, what the last Sceptical Century taught us, 
that this world is a steam-engine. There is a Grod 
5 in this world; and a God's-sanction, or else the 
violation of such, does look-out from all ruling and 
obedience, from all moral acts of men. There is 
no act more moral between men than that of rule 
and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedience 

10 when it is not due ; woe to him that refuses it 
when it is ! God's law is in that, I say, however 
the Parchment-laws may run : there is a Divine 
Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the heart of every, 
claim that one man makes upon another. 

15 It can do none of us harm to reflect on this : in 
all the relations of life it will concern us ; in Loy- 
alty and Royalty, the highest of these. I esteem 
the modern error. That all goes by self-interest and 
the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, 

20 and that, in short, there is nothing divine whatever 

in the association of men, a still more despicable 

error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, 

than that of a ' divine right ' in people called Kings. 

- I say. Find me the true Konning, King, or Able- 

25 man, and he has a divine right over me. That we 
knew in some tolerable measure how to find him, 
and that all men were ready to acknowledge his 
divine right when found : this is precisely the heal- 
ing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, 

30 seeking after ! The true King, as guide of the 
practical, has ever something of the Pontiff in him, 
— guide of the spiritual, from which all practice 



THE HERO AS KING 267 

has its rise. This too is a true saying, That the 
Ki7ig is head of the Church. — But we will leave 
the Polemic stuff of a dead century to lie quiet on 
its book-shelves. 

Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having 5 
your Able-man to seek, and not knowing in what 
manner to proceed about it ! That is the world's 
sad predicament in these times of ours. They are 
times of revolution, and have long been. The brick- 
layer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plum- lo 
met or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, 
and it all welters as we see ! But the beginning of 
it was not the French K,evolution; that is rather 
the end, we can hope. It were truer to say, the 
beginning was three centuries farther back : in the 15 
Reformation of Luther. That the thing which 
still called itself Christian Church had become a 
Falsehood, and brazenly went about pretending to 
pardon men's sins for metallic coined money, and 
to do much else which in the everlasting truth of 20 
Nature it did 7iot now do : here lay the vital mal- 
ady. The inward being wrong, all outward went 
ever more and more wrong. Belief died away ; 
all was Doubt, Disbelief. The builder cast away 
his plummet ; said to himself, " What is gravita- 25 
tion ? Brick lies on brick there ! " Alas, does it 
not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion 
that there is a G-od's-truth in the business of god- 
created men ; that all is not a kind of grimace, an 
' expediency,' diplomacy, one knows not what ! — 30 

From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, 



268 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

" You, self-styled Papa, you are no Father in God 
at all ; you are — a Chimera, whom I know not 
how to name in polite language ! " — from that 
onwards to the shout which rose round Camille 
o Desmoulins in the Palais-Eoyal, ^^ Aux armes!^^ 
when the people had burst-up against all manner 
of Chimeras, — I find a natural historical sequence. 
That shout too, so frightful, half -infernal, was a 
great matter. Once more the voice of awakened 

10 nations ; — starting confusedly, as out of night- 
mare, as out of death-sleep, into some dim feeling 
that Life was real ; that God's-world was not an 
expediency and diplomacy ! Infernal ; — yes, since 
they would not have it otherwise. Infernal, since 

15 not celestial or terrestrial ! Hollowness, insincerity 
has to cease; sincerity of some sort has to begin. 
Cost what it may, reigns of terror, horrors of 
French Eevolution or what else, we have to return 
to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said : a Truth clad 

20 in hellfire, since they would not but have it so ! — 

A common theory among considerable parties of 

men in England and elsewhere used to be, that the 

French Nation had, in those days, as it were gone 

mad; that the French devolution was a general act 

25 of insanity, a temporary conversion of France and 
large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam. 
The Event had risen and raged ; but was a madness 
and nonentity, — gone now happily into the region of 
Dreams and the Picturesque ! — To such comfortable 

30 philosophers, the Three Days of July, 1830, must 
have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the 
French Nation risen again, in musketry and death- 



THE HERO AS KING 269 

struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make that 
same mad French Kevokition good ! The sons and 
grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist in 
the enterprise : they do not disown it ; they will 
have it made good ; will have themselves shot, 5 
if it be not made good ! To philosophers who 
had made-up their life-system on that ' madness ' 
quietus, no phenomenon coidd be more alarming. 
Poor ISTiebuhr, they say, the Prussian Professor 
and Historian, fell broken-hearted in consequence ; 10 
sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the Three 
Days ! It was surely not a very heroic death ; — 
little better than Racine's, dying because Louis 
Fourteenth looked sternly on him once. The 
world had stood some considerable shocks, in its 15 
time; might have been expected to survive the 
Three Days too, and be found turning on its axis 
after even them ! The Three Days told all mortals 
that the old French Revolution, mad as it might 
look, was not a transitory ebullition of Bedlam, 20 
but a genuine product of this Earth where we all 
live ; that it was verily a Fact, and that the v/orld 
in general would do well everywhere to regard it 
as such. 

Truly, without the French Revolution, one would 25 
not know what to make of an age like this at all. 
We will hail the French Revolution, as shipwrecked 
mariners might the sternest rock, in a world other- 
wise all of baseless sea and waves. A true Apoca- 
lypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered so 
artificial time ; testifying once more that !N"ature 
is preternatural ; if not divine, then diabolic ; that 



270 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Semblance is not Eeality; that it has to become 
Reality, or the world will take-fire under it, — bnrn 
it into what it is, namely Nothing! Plausibility 
has ended ; empty Routine has ended ; much has 
5 ended. This, as with a Trump of Doom, has been 
proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who 
will learn it soonest. Long confused generations 
before it be learned ; peace impossible till it be ! 
The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world 

10 of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently 
strive to do his work, in the midst of that. Sentence 
of Death is written down in Heaven against all 
that ; sentence of Death is now proclaimed on the 
Earth against it : this he with his eyes may see. 

15 And surely, I should say, considering the other 
side of the matter, what enormous difficulties lie 
there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, 
the inexorable demand for solution of them is press- 
ing on, — he may easily find other work to do than 

20 labouring in the Sansculottic province at this time 
of day ! 

To me, in these circumstances, that of 'Hero- 
worship' becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; 
the most solacing fact one sees in the world at 

25 present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the 
management of the world. Had all traditions, ar- 
rangements, creeds, societies that men ever insti- 
tuted, sunk away, this would remain. The cer- 
tainty of Heroes being sent us ; our faculty, our 

30 necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent : it shines 
like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, 
and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration. 



THE SERO AS KING 271 

Hero-worship would have sounded very strange 
to those workers and fighters in the French Revo- 
lution. Not reverence for Great Men; not any 
hope or belief, or even wish, that Great Men could 
again appear in the world ! ISTature, turned into a 5 
^Machine/ was as if effete now; could not any 
longer produce Great Men : — I can tell her, she 
may give-up the trade altogether, then; we cannot 
do without Great Men ! — But neither have I any 
quarrel with that of ' Liberty and Equality ' ; with 10 
the faith that, wise great men being impossible, a 
level immensity of foolish small men would suffice. 
It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty 
and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. 
Hero-worship, reverence for such Authorities, has 15 
proved false, is itself a falsehood ; no more of it ! 
We have had such forgeries, we will now trust noth- 
ing. So many base plated coins passing in the 
market, the belief has now become common that 
no gold any longer exists, — and even that we can 20 
do very well without gold ! " I find this, among 
other things, in that universal cry of Liberty and 
Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then 
stood. 

And yet surely it is but the transition from false 25 
to true. Considered as the whole truth, it is false 
altogether ; — the product of entire sceptical blind- 
ness, as yet only struggling to see. Hero-worship 
exists forever, and everywhere : not Loyalty alone ; 
it extends from divine adoration down to the low- 30 
est practical regions of life. ^Bending before men,' 
if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dis- 



272 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

pensed with than practised, is Hero-worship, — a 
recognition that there does dwell in that presence 
of our brother something divine ; that every created 
man, as Novalis said, is a ^revelation in the Flesh.' 
5 They were Poets too, that devised all those grace- 
ful courtesies which make life noble ! Courtesy is 
not a falsehood or grimace ; it need not be such. 
And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still pos- 
sible ; nay still inevitable. 

10 May we not say, moreover, while so many of our 
late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary 
men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every 
genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of 
Order, not of Disorder ? It is a tragical position 

15 for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems 
an anarchist ; and indeed a painful element of an- 
archy does encumber him at every step, — him to 
whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His 
mission is Order ; every man's is. He is here to 

20 make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing 
ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. Is 
not all work of man in this world a making of 
Order 9 The carpenter finds rough trees ; shapes 
them, constrains them into square fitness, into pur- 

25 pose and use. We are all born enemies of Dis- 
order : it is tragical for us all to be concerned in 
image-breaking and down-pulling; for the G-reat 
Man, more a man than we, it is doubly tragical. 
Thus too all human things, maddest French Sans- 

30 culottisms, do and must work towards Order. I 
say, there is not a man in them, raging in the thick- 
est of the madness, but is impelled withal, at all 



THE HERO AS KING 273 

moments, towards Order. His very life means 
that ; Disorder is dissolution, death. 'No chaos but 
it seeks a centre to revolve round. While man is 
man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary 
finish of a Sansculottism. — Curious : in those days 5 
when Hero-worship was the most incredible thing 
to every one, how it does come-out nevertheless, 
and assert itself practically, in a way which all 
have to credit. Divine right, take it on the great 
scale, is found to mean divine might withal ! While 10 
old false Formulas are getting trampled every- 
where into destruction, new genuine Substances 
unexpectedly unfold themselves indestructible. In 
rebellious ages, when Kingship itself seems dead 
and abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step-forth again 15 
as Kings. The history of these men is what we 
have now to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. 
The old ages are brought back to us ; the manner 
in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself 
first took rise, is again exhibited in the history of 20 
these Two. 

We have had many civil-wars in England ; wars 
of Eed and White Eoses, wars of Simon de Mont- 
fort ; wars enough, which are not very memorable. 
But that war of the Puritans has a significance 25 
which belongs to no one of the others. Trusting 
to your candour, which will suggest on the other 
side what I have not room to say, I will call it a 
section once more of that great universal war which 
alone makes-up the true History of the World, — 30 
the war of Belief against Unbelief ! The struggle 



274 LECTURES OiV HEROES 

of men intent on the real essence of things, against 
men intent on the semblances and forms of things. 
The Puritans, to many, seem mere savage Icono- 
clasts, fierce destroyers of Forms ; but it were more 
5 just to call them haters of untrue Forms. I hope 
we know how to respect Laud and his King as well 
as them. Poor Laud seems to me to have been 
weak and ill-starred, not dishonest ; an unfortunate 
Pedant rather than anything worse. His ' Dreams' 

10 and superstitions, at which they laugh so,' have an 
affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like 
a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms. College- 
rules ; whose notion is that these are the life and 
safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with 

15 that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head 
not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the 
most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He 
thinks they ought to go by the old decent regula- 
tions ; nay that their salvation will lie in extending 

20 and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives 
with spasmodic vehemence towards his purpose ; 
cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, 
no cry of pity : He will have his College-rules 
obeyed by his Collegians ; that first ; and till that, 

25 nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. 
He would have it the world was a College of that 
kind, and the world was not that. Alas, was not 
his doom stern enough ? Whatever wrongs he did, 
were they not all frightfully avenged on him ? 

30 It is meritorious to insist on forms ; Eeligion 
and all else naturally clothes itself in forms. 
Everywhere the formed world is the only habitable 



THE HERO AS KING 275 

one. The naked formlessness of Puritanism is not , 
the thing I praise in the Puritans ; it is the thing I \ 
pity, — praising only the spirit which had rendered ) 
that inevitable ! All substances clothe themselves 
in forms : but there are suitable true forms, and 5 
then there are untrue, unsuitable. As the briefest 
definition, one might say, Forms which grow round 
a substance, if we rightly understand that, will 
correspond to the real nature and purport of it, will 
be true, good; forms which are consciously put lo 
round a substance, bad. I invite you to reflect on 
this. It distinguishes true from false in Ceremo- 
nial Porm, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, 
in all human things. 

There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity 15 
in forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a 
person making, what we call, ' set speeches,' is not 
he an offence ? In the mere drawing-room, what- 
soever courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted 
by no spontaneous reality within, are a thing you 20 
wish to get away from. But suppose now it were 
some matter of vital concernment, some transcen- 
dent matter (as Divine Worship is), about which 
your whole soul, struck dumb with its excess of 
feeling, knew not how to form itself into utterance 25 
at all, and preferred formless silence to any utter- 
ance there possible, — what should we say of a 
man coming forward to represent or utter it for 
you in the way of upholsterer-mummery ? Such a 
man, — let him depart swiftly, if he love himself! 30 
You have lost your only son; are mute, struck 
down, without even tears : an importunate man 



276 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games 
for him in the manner of the Greeks ! Siich mum- 
mery is not only not to be accepted, — it is hateful, 
unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called 

5 ' Idolatry,' worshipx3ing of hollow sJioivs ; what all 
earnest men do and will reject. We can partly un- 
derstand what those poor Puritans meant. Laud 
dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church, in 
the manner we have it described ; with his mul- 

10 tiplied ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, excla- 
mations : surely it is rather the rigorous formal 
Pedant, intent on his ^ College-rules,' than the earnest 
Prophet, intent on the essence of the matter ! 

Puritanism found such forms insupportable; 

15 trampled on such forms ; — we have to excuse it 
for saying, No form at all rather than such! It 
stood preaching in its bare pulpit, with nothing 
but the Bible in its hand. Nay, a man preaching 
from his earnest soul into the earnest souls of men : 

20 is not this virtually the essence of all Churches 
whatsoever ? The nakedest, savagest reality, I 
say, is preferable to any semblance, however digni- 
fied. Besides, it will clothe itself with due sem- 
blance by and by, if it be real. No fear of that ; 

25 actually no fear at all. Given the living man, 
there will be found clothes for him ; he will find 
himself clothes. But the suit-of -clothes pretending 
that it is both clothes and man — ! — We cannot 
'■ fight the French ' by three-hundred-thousand red 

30 uniforms; there must be men in thQ insnie of them! 
Semblance, I assert, must actually not divorce it- 
self from Reality. If Semblance do, — why then 



THE HEBO AS KING 277 

there must be men found to rebel against Sem- 
blance, for it bas become a lie ! These two Antag- 
onisms at war here, in the case of Land and the 
Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. They 
went to fierce battle over England in that age ; and 6 
fought-out their confused controversy to a certain 
length, with many results for all of us. 

In the age which directly followed that of the 
Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely 
to have justice done them. Charles Second and 10 
his E,ochesters were not the kind of men you would 
set to judge what the worth or meaning of such 
men might have been. That there could be any 
faith or truth in the life of a man, was what these 
poor Rochesters, and the age they ushered-in, had 15 
forgotten. Puritanism was hung on gibbets, — like 
the bones of the leading Puritans. Its work never- 
theless went on accomplishing itself. All true 
work of a man, hang the author of it on what gibbet 
you like, must and will accomplish itself. We have 20 
our Habeas-Gorpus, our free E-epresentation of the 
People; acknowledgment, wide as the world, that 
all men are, or else must, shall and will become, 
what we call free men ; — men with their life 
grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, 25 
which has become unjust and a chimera ! This in 
part, and much besides this, was the work of the 
Puritans. 

And indeed, as these things became gradually 
manifest, the character of the Puritans began to 30 
clear itself. Their memories were, one after another. 



278 LECTURES ON HEROES 

taken down from tlie gibbet ; nay a certain portion 
of them are now, in these days, as good as canonised. 
Eliot, Hampden, Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutchinson, 
Vane himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes ; 

5 political Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small 
degree we owe what makes us a free England : it 
would not be safe for anybody to designate these 
men as wicked now. Eew Puritans of note but 
find their apologists somewhere, and have a certain 

10 reverence paid them by earnest men. One Puritan, 
I think, and almost he alone, our poor Cromwell, 
seems to hang yet on the gibbet, and find no hearty 
apologist anywhere. Him neither saint nor sinner 
will acquit of great wickedness. A man of ability, 

15 infinite talent, courage, and so forth : but he be- 
trayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, dishonesty, 
duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical Tartufe; 
turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional 
Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own bene- 

20 fit : this and worse is the character they give of 
Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with 
Washington and others ; above all, with these noble 
Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole 
for himself, and ruined into a futility and deformity. 

25 This view of Cromwell seems to me the not un- 
natural product of a century like the Eighteenth. 
As we said of the Valet, so of the Sceptic : He 
does not know a Hero when he sees him ! The Valet 
expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, bodyguards 

30 and flourishes of trumpets : the Sceptic of the 
Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable 
Formulas, ' Principles,' or what else he may call 



THE HERO AS KING 279 

them ; a style of speech and conduct which has got 
to seem ' respectable/ which can plead for itself in 
a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suf- 
frages of an enlightened sceptical Eighteenth cen- 
tury! It is, at bottom, the same thing that both 5 
the Valet and he expect : the garnitures of some 
acknowledged royalty, which then they will acknow- 
ledge ! The King coming to them in the rugged 
i^Tiformulistic state shall be no King. 

For my own share, far be it from me to say 10 
or insinuate a word of disparagement against such 
characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym ; whom I be- 
lieve to have been right worthy and useful men. I 
have read diligently what books and documents about 
them I could come at; — with the honestest wish 15 
to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes ; 
but I am sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, 
with very indifferent success ! At bottom, I found 
that it would not do. They are very noble men, 
these ; step along in their stately way, with their 20 
measured euphemisms, philosophies, parliamentary 
eloquences. Ship-moneys, Monarchies of Man ; a 
most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of 
men. But the heart remains cold before them ; 
the fancy alone endeavours to get-up some worship 25 
of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break- 
forth into any fire of brotherly love for these men ? 
They are become dreadfully dull men ! One breaks- 
down often enough in the constitutional eloquence 
of the admirable Pym, with his ^seventhly and 30 
lastly.' You find that it may be the admirablest 
thing in the world, but that it is heavy, — heavy 



280 LECTURES ON HEROES 

as lead, barren as brick-clay ; that, in a word, for 
you there is little or nothing now surviving there ! 
One leaves all these Nobilities standing in their 
niches of honour : the rugged outcast Cromwell, he 
5 is the man of them all in whom one still finds 
human stuff. The great savage Baresark : he could 
write no euphemistic Monarchy of Man ; did not 
S]3eak, did not work with glib regularity ; had no 
straight story to tell for himself anywhere. But he 

10 stood bare, not cased in euphemistic coat-of-mail ; he 
grappled like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, 
with the naked truth of things ! That, after all, is 
the sort of man for one. I plead guilty to valuing 
such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth- 

15 shaven Eespectabilities not a few one finds, that 
are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for 
f keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the 
work but with gloves on ! 

IS'either, on the whole, does this constitutional tol- 

20 erance of the Eighteenth century for the other hap- 
pier Puritans seem to be a very great matter. One 
might say, it is but a piece of Formulism and Scep- 
ticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful 
thing to consider that the foundation of our English 

25 Liberties should have been laid by ' Superstition. ' 
These Puritans came forward with Calvinistic in- 
credible Creeds, Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Con- 
fessions ; demanding, chiefly of all, that they should 
have liberty to worship in their own way. Liberty to 

30 tax themselves : that was the thing they should have 
demanded ! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, dis- 
graceful ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to 



THE HERO AS KING 281 

insist on the other thing ! — Liberty to tax oneself ? 
Not to pay-out money from your pocket except on 
reason shown ? No century, I think, but a rather 
barren one would have fixed on that as the first 
right of mail ! I should say, on the contrary, A just 5 
man will generally have better cause than money in 
what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against 
his Government. Ours is a most confused world ; 
in which a good man will be thankful to see any 
kind of Government maintain itself in a not insup- lo 
portable manner : and here in England, to this hour, 
if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which 
he can see very small reason in, it will not go well 
with him, I think ! He must try some other climate 
than this. Taxgatherer ? Money ? He will say : 15 
" Take my money, since you can, and it is so desira- 
ble to you; take it, — and take yourself away with 
it ; and leave me alone to my work here. I am still 
here ; can still work, after all the money you have 
taken from me ! " But if they come to him, and say, 20 
" Acknowledge a Lie ; pretend to say you are wor- 
shipping God, when you are not doing it : believe 
not the thing that you find true, but the thing that 
I find, or pretend to find true ! " He will answer : 
" No ; by God's help, no ! You may take my purse ; 25 
but I cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The 
purse is any Highwayman's who might meet me 
with a loaded pistol : but the Self is mine and God 
my Maker's ; it is not yours ; and I will resist you 
to the death, and revolt against you, and, on the 30 
whole, front all manner of extremities, accusations 
and confusions, in defence of that ! " — ■ 



282 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Really, it seems to nie the one reason which, 
could justify revoltingj this of the Puritans. It has 
been the soul of all just revolts among men. Not 
Hunger alone produced even the French devolution; 

5 no, but the feeling of the insupportable all-pervading 
Falsehood which had now embodied itself in Hunger, 
in universal material Scarcity and Nonentity, and 
thereby become indisputably false in the eyes of all ! 
We will leave the Eighteenth century with its ^lib- 

10 erty to tax itself.' We will not astonish ourselves 
that the meaning of such men as the Puritans re- 
mained dim to it. To men who believe in no reality 
at all, how shall a real human soul, the intensest of 
all realities, as it were the Voice of this world's 

15 Maker still speaking to us, — be intelligible ? What 
it cannot reduce into constitutional doctrines rela- 
tive to 'taxing,' or other like material interest, 
gross, palpable to the sense, such a century will 
needs reject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. 

20 Hampden s, Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme 
of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fer- 
vid; — which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as 
ice does : and the irreducible Cromwell will remain 
a chaotic mass of ' madness,' ' hypocrisy,' and much 

25 else. 

From of old, I will confess, this theory of Crom- 
well's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I 
cannot believe the like, of any G-reat Man whatever. 
Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false 
30 selfish men ; but if we will consider it, they are but 
figures for us, unintelligible shadows ; we do not see 



THE HERO A8 KING 283 

into them as men that could have existed at all. A 
superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye 
but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could 
form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul 
be possible without a conscience in it, the essence of 5 
all 7'eal souls, great or small ? — No, we cannot fig- 
ure Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity ; the longer 
I study him and his career, I believe this the less. 
Why should we ? There is no evidence of it. Is 
it not strange that, after all the mountains of cal- 10 
umny this man has been subject to, after being rep- 
resented as the very prince of liars, who never, or 
hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning 
counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been 
one falsehood brought clearly home to him ? A prince 15 
of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one that I 
could yet get sight of. It is likePococke asking Gro- 
tius. Where is your proof of Mahomet's Pigeon ? No 
proof! — Let us leave all these calumnious chime- 
ras, as chimeras ought to be left. They are not 20 
portraits of the man; they are distracted phantasms 
of him, the joint product of hatred and darkness. 

Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it 
seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests 
itself. W^hat little we know of his earlier obscure 25 
years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not 
all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of 
man ? His nervous melancholic temperament indi- 
cates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of those 
stories of ' Spectres ' ; of the white Spectre in broad 30 
daylight, predicting that he should be King of Eng- 
land, we are not bound to believe much ; — probably 



284 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

no more than of tlie other black Spectre, or Devil in 
person, to whom the Officer saw him sell himself 
before Worcester Fight ! But the mournful, over- 
sensitive, hypochondriac humour of Oliver, in his 
5 young years, is otherwise indisputably known. The 
Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick 
himself. He had often been sent for at midnight; 
Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought 
himself near dying, and "had fancies about the 

10 Town-cross." These things are significant. Such 
an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged 
stubborn strength of his, is not the symptom of 
falsehood; it is the symptom and promise of quite 
other than falsehood ! 

15 The young Oliver is sent to study Law ; falls, or 
is said to have fallen, for a little period, into some of 
the dissipations of youth ; but if so, speedily repents, 
abandons all this : not much above twenty, he is 
married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet 

20 man. ^He pays-back what money he had won at 
gambling,' says the story ; — he does not think any 
gain of that kind could be really his. It is very 
interesting, very natural, this ^ conversion,' as they 
well name it ; this awakening of a great true soul 

25 from the worldly slough, to see into the awful truth 
of things ; — to see that Time and its shows all rested 
on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the 
threshold either of Heaven or of Hell ! Oliver's life 
at St. Ives and Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is 

30 it not altogether as that of a true and devout man ? 
He has renounced the world and its ways ; its prizes 
are not the thing that can enrich him. He tills the 



THE HERO AS KING 285 

earth; he reads his Bible; daily assembles his ser- 
vants around him to worship God. He comforts per- 
secuted ministers, is fond of preachers ; nay can 
himself preach, — exhorts his neighbours to be wise, 
to redeem the time. In all this what 'hypocrisy/ 5 
' ambition/ ' cant/ or other falsity ? The man's 
hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher 
World ; his aim to get well thither, by walking well 
through his humble course in this world. He courts 
no notice : what could notice here do for him ? lO 
' Ever in his great Taskmaster's eye.' 

It is striking, too, how he comes-out once into pub- 
lic view ; he, since no other is willing to come : in 
resistance to a public grievance. I mean, in that 
matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to 15 
law with Authority ; therefore he will. That matter 
once settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his 
Bible and his Plough. ' Grain influence ' ? His in- 
fluence is the most legitimate ; derived from personal 
knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reasonable 20 
and determined man. In this way he has lived till 
past forty ; old age is now in view of him, and the 
earnest portal of Death and Eternity ; it was at this 
point that he suddenly became ' ambitious ' ! I do 
not interpret his Parliamentary mission in that way. 25 

His successes in Parliament, his successes through 
the war, are honest successes of a brave man ; who 
has more resolution in the heart of him, more light 
in the head of him than other men. His prayers to 
God ; his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who 30 
had preserved him safe, and carried him forward so 
far, through the furious clash of a world all set in 



286 LECTURES ON HEROES 

conflict, fhrough desperate-looking envelopments at 
Dunbar; through the death-hail of so many battles ; 
mercy after mercy ; to the ' crowning mercy ' of 
"Worcester Fight : all this is good and genuine for a 

5 deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain 
unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but 
their own 'love-locks,' frivolities and formalities, 
living quite apart from contemplations of God, 
living ivithout God in the world, need it seem 

10 hypocritical. 

Nor will his participation in the King's death in- 
volve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern 
business killing of a King ! But if you once go to 
war with him, it lies there; this and all else lies 

15 there. Once at war, you have made wager of battle 
with him : it is he to die, or else you. Eeconcilia- 
tion is problematic ; may be possible, or, far more 
likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally 
admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished 

20 Charles Eirst, had no way of making any tenable 
arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian 
party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were 
most anxious to do so ; anxious indeed as for their 
own existence ; but it could not be. The unhappy 

25 Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, 
shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being 
dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and 
would not understand : — whose thought did not in 
any measure represent to him the real fact of the 

30 matter ; nay worse, whose tvoi^d did not at all repre- 
sent his thought. We may say this of him without 
cruelty, with deep pity rather : but it is true and 



THE HERO AS KING 287 

■andeniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of 
Kingship, he still, j&nding himself treated with out- 
ward respect as a King, fancied that he might play-off 
party against party, and smuggle himself into his old 
power by deceiving both. Alas, they both discovered 6 
that he was deceiving them. A man whose ivord 
will not inform you at all what he means or will do, 
is not a man you can bargain with. You must get 
out of that man's way, or put him out of yours ! 
The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still for 10 
believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable 
again and again. Not so Cromwell : " For all our 
fighting, " says he, " we are to have a little bit of 
paper ? " No ! — 

In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive 15 
practical eye of this man; how he drives towards 
the practical and practicable; has a genuine insight 
into what is fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, 
does not belong to a false man : the false man sees 
false shows, plausibilities, expediencies : the true 20 
man is needed to discern even practical truth. 
Cromwell's advice about the Parliament's Army, 
early in the contest. How they were to dismiss their 
city-tapsters, flimsy riotous persons, and choose sub- 
stantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be 25 
soldiers for them : this is advice by a man who saw. 
Fact answers, if you see into Fact ! Cromwell's Iron- 
sides were the embodiment of this insight of his; 
men fearing God ; and without any other fear. No 
more conclusively genuine set of fighters ever trod 30 
the soil of England, or of any other land. 

Neither will we blame greatly that word of Crom- 



288 LECTURES ON HEROES 

well's to them ; which, was so blamed : "If the King 
should meet me in battle, I would kill the King." 
Why not ? These words were spoken to men who 
stood as before a Higher than Kings. They had 
5 set more than their own lives on the cast. The 
Parliament may call it, in official language, a fight- 
ing 'for the King ' ; but we, for our share, cannot 
understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no 
sleek officiality ; it is sheer rough death and earnest. 

10 They have brought it to the calling-forth of War; 
horrid internecine fight, man grappling with man in 
fire-eyed rage, — the infernal element in man called 
forth to try it by that ! Do that therefore ; since that 
is the thing to be done. — The successes of Crom- 

15 well seem to me a very natural thing ! Since he was 
not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. 
That such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart 
to dare, should advance, from post to post, from vic- 
tory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, 

20 by whatever name you might call him, the acknow- 
ledged Strongest Man in England, virtually the King 
of England, requires no magic to explain it ! — 

Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a 
man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, 

25 insincerity; not to know a Sincerity when they 
see it. Eor this world, and for all worlds, what 
curse is so fatal ? The heart tying dead, the eye 
cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the 
vulpine intellect. That a true King be sent them 

30 is of small use ; they do not know him when sent. 
They say scornfully. Is this your King ? The Hero 
wastes his heroic faculty in bootless contradiction 



THE HEEO AS KING 289 

from the unworthy; and can accomplish little. For 
himself he does accomplish a heroic life, which is 
much, which is all ; but for the world he accom- 
plishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sin- 
cerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering 5 
from the witness-box : in your small-debt pie-powder 
court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine 
intellect ' detects ' him. For being a man worth 
any thousand men, the response your Knox, your 
Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries 10 
whether he was a man at all. God's greatest gift 
to this Earth is sneeringly flung away. The mi- 
raculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to 
pass in the shops as a common guinea. 

Lamentable this ! I say, this must be remedied. 15 
Till this be remedied in some measure, there is 
nothing remedied. ' Detect quacks ? ' Yes do, for 
Heaven's sake ; but know withal the men that are 
to be trusted ! Till we know that, what is all our 
knowledge ; how shall we even so much as ' detect ' ? 20 
For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself 
to be knowledge, and ' detects ' in that fashion, is 
far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many : but, of all 
dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who 
lives in undue terror of being duped. The world 25 
does exist ; the world has truth in it, or it would 
not exist! First recognise what is true, we shall 
then discern what is false ; and properly never till 
then. 

^ Know the men that are to be trusted : ' alas, this 30 
is yet, in these days, very far from us. The sincere 
alone can recognise sincerity. Not a Hero only is 
u 



290 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

needed, but a world fit for Mm; a world not of 
Valets; — the Hero comes almost in vain to it 
otherwise ! Yes, it is far from us : but it must 
come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it 

5 do come, what have we? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, 
French Revolutions : — if we are as Valets, and do 
not know the Hero when we see him, what good 
are all these ? A heroic Cromwell comes ; and for 
a hundred-and-fifty years he cannot have a vote 

10 from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is 
the natural property of the Quack, and of the Father 
of quacks and quackeries ! Misery, confusion, un- 
veracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes 
we alter the Jigure of our Quack ; but the substance 

15 of him continues. The Valet- World has to be gov- 
erned by the Sham-Hero, by the King merely 
dressed in King-gear. It is his ; he is its ! In brief, 
one of two things : We shall either learn to know 
a Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat 

20 better, when we see him ; or else go on to be for- 
ever governed by the Unheroic ; — had we ballot- 
boxes clattering at every street-corner, there were 
no remedy in these. 

Poor Cromwell, — great Cromwell ! The inar- 

25 ticulate Prophet ; Prophet who could not speak. 
E-ude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with 
his savage depth, with his wild sincerity ; and he 
looked so strange, among the elegant Euphemisms, 
dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths, 

30 diplomatic Clarendons ! Consider him. An outer 
hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, 
nervous dreams, almost semi-madness ; and yet 



THE HERO AS KING 291 

such a clear determinate man's-energy working in 
the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The 
ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such 
an element of boundless hypochondria, 'i4?iformed 
black of darkness ! And yet withal this hypo- 5 
chondria, what was it but the very greatness of the 
man ? The depth and tenderness of his wild 
affections : the quantity of symjjathy he had with 
things, — the quantity of insight he would yet get 
into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet lo 
get over things : this was his hypochondria. The 
man's misery, as man's misery always does, came 
of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind 
of man. Sorrow-stricken, half -distracted ; the wide 
element of mournful black enveloping him, — wide 15 
as the world. It is the character of a prophetic 
man ; a man with his whole soul seeing, and strug- 
gling to see. 

On this ground, too, I explain to myself Crom- 
well's reputed confusion of speech. To himself the 20 
internal meaning was sun-clear ; but the material 
with which he was to clothe it in utterance was 
not there. He had lived silent; a great unnamed 
sea of Thought round him all his days ; and in his 
way of life little call to attempt naming or uttering 25 
that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute 
power of action, I doubt not he could have learned 
to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough ; 
— he did harder things than writing of Books. 
iThis kind of man is precisely he who is fit for 30 
doing manfully all things you will set him on 
doing. Intellect is not speaking and logicising; 



292 LECTURES ON HEROES 

it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, Vir-tus, man- 
hood, Zieroliood, is not fair-spoken immaculate reg- 
ularity; it is first of all, what the Germans well 
name it, Tugend {Taugend, dow-iwg or Dow^/i-tiness), 

5 Courage and the Faculty to do. This basis of the 
matter Cromwell had in him. 

One understands moreover how, though he could 
not speak in Parliament, he might preachy rhapsodic 
preaching ; above all, how he might be great in ex- 

10 tempore prayer. These are the free outpouring 
utterances of what is in the heart : method is not 
required in them ; warmth, depth, sincerity are all 
that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a 
notable feature of him. All his great enterprises 

15 were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable- 
looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to as- 
semble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, 
till some definite resolution rose among them, some 
^ door of hope,' as they would name it, disclosed 

20 itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, 
and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, 
to make His light shine before them. They, armed 
Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be : 
a little band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn 

25 the sword against a great black devouring world 
not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish, — they 
cried to God in their straits, in their extreme need, 
not to forsake the Cause that was His. The light 
which now rose upon them, — how could a human 

30 soul, by any means at all, get better light ? A^as 
not the purpose so formed like to be precis^y 
the best, wisest, the one to be followed without 



THE HEBO AS KING 293 

hesitation any more ? To tlieni it was as the 
shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the waste- 
howling darkness ; the Pillar of Fire by night, that 
was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. 
Was it not such? Can a man's soul, to this hour, 5 
get guidance by any other method than intrinsically 
by that same, — devout prostration of the earnest 
struggling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all 
Light ; be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it 
a voiceless, inarticulate one ? There is no other lo 
method. ' Hypocrisy ' ? One begins to be weary 
of all that. They who call it so, have no right to 
speak on such matters. They never formed a pur- 
pose, what one can call a purpose. They went 
about balancing expediencies, plausibilities ; gath- 15 
ering votes, advices; they never were alone with 
the truth of a thing at all. — Cromwell's prayers 
were likely to be ' eloquent,' and much more than 
that. His was the heart of a man who could pray. 

But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, 20 
were not nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they 
look. We find he was, what all speakers aim to 
. be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament ; one 
who, from the first, had weight. With that rude 
passionate voice of his, he was always understood 25 
to mean something, and men wished to know what. 
He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and dis- 
liked it; spoke always without premeditation of 
the words he was to use. The Eeporters, too, in 
those days seem to have been singularly candid; 30 
and to have given the Printer precisely what they 
found on their own note-paper. And withal, what 



294 LECTURES ON HEROES 

a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the pre- 
meditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play 
before the world, That to the last he took no more 
charge of his Speeches! How came he not to study 

5 his words a little, before flinging them out to the 
public ? If the words were true words, they could 
be left to shift for themselves. 

But with regard to Cromwell's ^ lying,' we will 
make one remark. This, I suppose, or something 

10 like this, to have been the nature of it. All parties 
found themselves deceived in him; each party un- 
derstood him to be meaning this, heard him even 
say so, and behold he turns-out to have been mean- 
ing that! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. 

15 But now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable 
fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply 
of a superior man ? Such a man must have reti- 
cences in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon 
his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not 

20 extend far ! There is no use for any man's taking- 
up his abode in a house built of glass. A man 
always is to be the judge how much of his mind he 
will show to other men; even to those he would 
have work along with him. There are imperti- 

25 nent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the 
inquirer uninformed on that matter ; not, if you 
can help it, mmnformed, but precisely as dark as 
he was ! This, could one hit the right phrase of 
response, is what the wise and faithful man would 

30 aim to answer in such a case. 

Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the 
dialect of small subaltern parties ; uttered to them 



THE HERO AS KING 295 

a part of his mind. Each little party thought him 
all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find 
him not of their party, but of his own ]3arty ! Was 
it his blame ? At all seasons of his history he must 
have felt, among such people, how, if he explained 5 
to them the deeper insight he had, they must either 
have shuddered aghast at it, or believing it, their 
own little compact hypothesis must have gone 
wholly to wreck. They could not have worked in 
his province any more ; nay perhaps they could not 10 
now have worked in their own province. It is the 
inevitable position of a great man among small men. 
Small men, most active, useful, are to be seen 
everywhere, whose whole activity depends on some 
conviction which to you is palpably a limited one ; 15 
imperfect, what we call an error. But would it be 
a kindness always, is it a duty always or often, to 
disturb them in that ? Many a man, doing loud 
work in the world, stands only on some thin tra- 
ditionality, conventionality ; to him indubitable, to 20 
you incredible : break that beneath him, he sinks to 
endless depths ! " I might have my hand full of 
truth," said Fontenelle, " and open only my little 
finger." 

And if this be the fact even in matters of doc- 25 
trine, how much more in all departments of prac- 
tice ! He that cannot withal keep Ms mind to 
himself cannot practise any considerable thing 
whatever. And we call it ' dissimulation,' all this ? 
What would you think of calling the general of an so 
army a dissembler because he did not tell every 
corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the 



29.6 LECTUEES ON HEROES 

question, what Ms tliouglits were about everything ? 
— Cromwellj I should rather say, managed all this 
in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An 
endless vortex of such questioning ' corporals ' 
5 rolled confusedly round him through his whole 
course ; whom he did answer. It must have been 
as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. 
Not one proved falsehood, as I said ; not one ! Of 
what man that ever wound himself through such a 
10 coil of things will you say so much ? — 

But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, 
which pervert to the very basis of our judgments 
formed about such men as Cromwell; about their 
' ambition,' ' falsity,' and suchlike. The first is 

15 what I might call substituting the goal of their 
career for the course and Starting-point of it. The 
vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had 
determined on being Protector of England, at the 
time when he was ploughing the marsh lands of 

20 Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped-out : a 
program of the whole drama; which he then step 
by step dramatically unfolded, with all manner of 
cunning, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on, — 
the hollow, scheming 'YTroKptTTJs, or Play-actor, that 

25 he was ! This is a radical perversion ; all but 
universal in such cases. And think for an instant 
how different the fact is ! How much does one 
of Its foresee of his own life ? Short way ahead of 
us it is all dim ; an i^^iwound skein of possibilities, 

30 of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming 
hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in 



TBM HEUO AS KING 297 

tliat fashion of Program, which he needed then, 
with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to 
enact dramatically, scene after scene ! Not so. 
We see it so ; but to him it was in no measure so. 
What absurdities would fall-away of themselves, 5 
were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view 
by History ! Historians indeed will tell you that 
they do keep it in view; — but look whether such is 
practically the fact ! Vulgar History, as in this 
Cromwell's case, omits it altogether ; even the best lo 
kinds of History only remember it now and then. 
To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in 
fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty ; rare, 
nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or 
more than Shakspeare ; who could enact a brother 15 
man's biography, see with the brother man's eyes at 
all points of his course what things he saw; in 
short, know his course and him, as few ' Historians ' 
are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied 
perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, 20 
will disappear, if we honestly so much as try to rep- 
resent them so; in sequence, as they ivere; not in 
the lump, as they are thrown-down before us. 

But a second error, which I think the generality 
commit, refers to this same 'ambition' itself. We 25 
exaggerate the ambition of Great Men ; we mistake 
what the nature of it is. Great Men are not am- 
bitious in that sense ; he is a small poor man that 
is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in 
misery because he does not shine above other men ; 30 
who goes about producing himself, pruriently anx- 
ious about his gifts and claims ; struggling to force 



298 LECTURES OiV HEROES 

everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's 
sake, to acknowledge liim a great man, and set him 
over the heads of men ! Such a creature is among 
the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A 
5 great man ? A poor morbid prurient empty man ; 
fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne 
among men. I advise you to keep-out of his way. 
He cannot walk on quiet paths ; unless you will 
look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about 

10 him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, 
not his greatness. Because there is nothing in 
himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find 
something in him. In good truth, I believe no 
great man, not so much as a genuine man who had 

15 health and real substance in him of whatever mag- 
nitude, was ever much tormented in this way. 

Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be 
' noticed ' by noisy crowds of people ? God his 
Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was 

20 already there ; no notice would make liim other 
than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; 
and Life from the downhill slope was all seen to 
be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measura- 
ble matter liow it went, — he had been content to 

25 plough the ground, and read his Bible. He in his 
old days could not support it any longer, without 
selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in 
gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with 
bundles of papers haunting him, " Decide this, de- 

30 cide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no man 
can perfectly decide ! What could gilt carriages 
do for this man ? From of old, was there not in 



THE HERO AS KING 299 

his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splen- 
dour as of Heaven itself ? His existence there as 
man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, 
Judgment and Eternity : these already lay as the 
background of whatsoever he thought or did. All 5 
his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, 
which no speech of a mortal could name. God's 
Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had 
read it : this was great, and all else was little to 
him. To call such a man ^ ambitious,' to figure him lo 
as the prurient windbag described above, seems to 
me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say: 
" Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep 
your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your 
important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me 15 
alone; there is too much of life in me already!" 
Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England 
in his day, was not ambitious. ' Corsica Boswell ' 
flaunted at public shows with printed ribbons round 
his hat ; but the great old Samuel stayed at home. 20 
The world-wide soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in 
its sorrows ; — what could paradings, and ribbons 
in the hat, do for it ? 

Ah yes, I will say again : The great silent men ! 
Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, 25 
words with little meaning, actions with little worth, 
one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. 
The noble silent men, scattered here and there, 
each in his department ; silently thinking, silently 
working ; whom no Morning Newspaper makes 30 
mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A 
country that has none or few of these is in a bad 



800 LUCTUB^S OiSl HMBO^S 

way. Like a forest which had no roots; which 
had all turned into leaves and boughs ; — which 
must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if 
we had nothing but what we can show, or speak. 
5 Silence, the great Empire of Silence : higher than 
the stars ; deeper than the Kingdoms of Death ! It 
alone is great ; all else is small. — I hope we Eng- 
lish will long maintain our grand talent x>oiir le 
silence. Let others that cannot do without stand- 

10 ing on barrel-heads, to spout, and be seen of all 
the market-place, cultivate speech exclusively, — be- 
come a most green forest without roots ! Solomon 
says, There is a time to speak ; but also a time to 
keep silence. Of some great silent Samuel, not 

15 urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he 
was, by loant of money, and nothing other, one 
might ask, " Why do not you too get up and 
speak ; promulgate your system, found your sect ? " 
"Truly," he will answer, "I am coiitinent of my 

20 thought hitherto ; happily I have yet had the 
ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong 
enough to speak it. My ' system ' is not for pro- 
mulgation first of all ; it is for serving myself to 
live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. 

25 And then the ' honour ' ? Alas, yes ; — but as Cato 
said of the statue : So many statues in that Eorum 
of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is 

Cato's statue ? " 

But now, by way of counterpoise to this of 

30 Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of 
ambition ; one wholly blamable, the other laudable 
and inevitable. Nature has provided that the 



THE HERO AS KING 301 

great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. 
The selfish, wish to shine over others, let it be ac- 
counted altogether poor and miserable. ' Seekest 
thou great things, seek them not : ' this is most 
true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressible ten- 5 
dency in every man to develop himself according 
to the magnitude which Nature has made him of ; 
to speak-out, to act-out, what Nature has laid in 
him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a 
duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. 10 
The meaning of life here on earth might be defined 
as consisting in this : To unfold your self, to work 
what thing you have the faculty for. It is a neces- 
sity for the human being, the first law of our 
existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks that the 15 
infant learns to speak by this necessity it feels. — 
We will say therefore : To decide about ambition, 
whether it is bad or not, you have two things to 
take into view. Not the coveting of the place 
alone, but the fitness of the man for the place 20 
withal : that is the question. Perhaps the place was 
Ms; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obli- 
gation, to seek the place ! Mirabeau's ambition to 
be Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he 
were ^ the only man in France that could have done 25 
any good there ' ? Hopef uler perhaps had he not 
so clearly felt how much good he could do ! But a 
poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even 
felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted 
because they had flung him out, and he was now 30 
quit of it, well might Gibbon mourn over him. — 
Nature, I say, has provided amply that the silent 



302 LECTURES ON HEROES 

great man shall strive to speak withal ; too amply, 
rather ! 

Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the 
brave old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up ex- 

5 istence, that it was possible for him to do priceless 
divine work for his country and the whole world. 
That the perfect Heavenly Law might be made 
Law on this Earth ; that the prayer he prayed 
daily, ^ Thy kingdom come,' was at length to be ful- 

10 filled ! If you had convinced his judgment of this ; 
that it was possible, practicable ; that he the mourn- 
ful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it ! 
Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed-up 
into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and 

15 determination to act ; casting all sorrows and mis- 
givings under his feet, counting all afi&iction and 
contradiction small, — the whole dark element of 
his existence blazing into articulate radiance of 
light and lightning ? It were a true ambition this ! 

20 And think now how it actually was with Cromwell. 
From of old, the sufferings of G-od's Church, true 
zealous Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, 
whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt-off, God's 
Gospel-cause trodden under foot of the unworthy ; 

25 all this had lain heavy on his soul. Long years he 
had looked upon it, in silence, in prayer; seeing 
no remedy on Earth ; trusting well that a remedy 
in Heaven's goodness would come, — that such a 
course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. 

30 And now behold the dawn of it ; after twelve years 
silent waiting, all England stirs itself ; there is to 
be once more a Parliament, the Eight will get a 



THE HERO AS KING 303 

voice for itself: inexpressible well-gromided liope 
has come again into the Earth. Was not such a 
Parliament worth being a member of ? Cromwell 
threw down his ploughs, and hastened thither. 

He spoke there, — rugged bursts of earnestness, 5 
of a self-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of 
them. He worked there ; he fought and strove, 
like a strong true giant of a man, through cannon- 
tumult and all else, — on and on, till the Cause 
triumphed, its once so formidable enemies all swept 10 
from before it, and the dawn of hope had become 
clear light of victory and certainty. That he stood 
there as the strongest soul of England, the undis- 
puted Hero of all England, — what of this ? It 
was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel could 15 
now establish itself in the world ! The Theocracy 
which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as 
a ^ devout imagination,' this practical man, experi- 
enced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, 
dared to consider as capable of being realised. 20 
Those that were highest in Christ's Church, the 
devoutest wisest men, were to rule the land: in 
some considerable degree, it might be so and should 
be so. Was it not true, God's truth ? And if true, 
was it not then the very thing to do ? The strong- 25 
est practical intellect in England dared to answer, 
Yes ! This I call a noble true purpose ; is it not, 
in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter into 
the heart of Statesman or man ? For a Knox to 
take it up was something ; but for a Cromwell, with 30 
his great sound sense and experience of what our 
world was, — History, I think, shows it only this 



304 LECTURES ON HEROES 

once in such a degree. I account it tlie culminating 
point of Protestantism ; the most heroic phasis that 
^ Faith in the Bible ' was appointed to exhibit here 
below. Fancy it : that it were made manifest to 

5 one of us, how we could make the Eight supremely 
victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed 
and prayed for, as the highest good to England and 
all lands, an attainable fact ! 

Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its 

10 knowingness, its alertness and expertness in ^de- 
tecting hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry 
business. We have had but one such Statesman 
in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who 
ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at 

15 all. One man, in the course of fifteen-hundred 
years; and this was his welcome. He had adhe- 
rents by the hundred or the ten ; opponents by the 
million. Had England rallied all round him, — 
why, then, England might have been a Christian 

20 land ! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its 
hopeless problem, ' Given a world of Knaves, to 
educe an Honesty from their united action ' ; — 
how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery 
Law-Courts, and some other places ! Till at length, 

25 by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great 
grace, the matter begins to stagnate ; and this prob- 
lem is becoming to all men d^ palpably hopeless one. — 

But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes : 
Hume, and a multitude following him, come upon 
30 me here with an admission that Cromwell was sin- 
cere at first ; a sincere ' Fanatic ' at first, but gradu- 



THE HEBO AS KING 305 

ally became a ' Hypocrite ' as tilings opened round 
him. This of the Fanatic-Hypocrite is Hume's 
theory of it; extensively applied since, — to Ma- 
homet and many others. Think of it seriously, 
you will find something in it; not much, not all, 5 
very far from all. Sincere hero hearts do not sink 
in this miserable manner. The Sun flings-forth 
impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots ; but 
it does not quench itself, and become no Sun at all, 
but a mass of Darkness ! I will venture to say that 10 
such never befell a great deep Cromwell ; I think, 
never. Nature's own lion-hearted Son; Antseus- 
like, his strength is got by touching the Earth, his 
Mother ; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up 
into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We 15 
will not assert that Cromwell was an immaculate 
man; that he fell into no faults, no insincerities 
among the rest. He was no dilettante professor of 
'perfections,' 'immaculate conducts.' He was a 
rugged Orson, rending his rough way through act- 20 
ual true ivo7'k, — doubtless with many a fall therein. 
Insincerities, faults, very many faults daily and 
hourly : it was too well known to him ; known to God 
and him ! The Sun was dimmed many a time ; but 
the Sun had not himself grown a Dimness. Crom- 25 
well's last words, as he lay waiting for death, are 
those of a Christian heroic man. Broken prayers 
to God, that He would judge him and this Cause, 
He, since man could not, in justice yet in pity. They 
are most touching words. He breathed-out his wild 30 
great soul, its toils and sins all ended now, into the 
presence of his Maker, in this manner. 



306 LECTURES ON HEROES 

1, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite! 
Hypocrite, niummer, the life of him a mere theat- 
ricality ; empty barren quack, hungry for the shouts 
of mobs ? The man had made obscurity do very 

5 well for him till his head was gray ; and now he 
was, there as he stood recognised unblamed, the 
virtual King of England. Cannot a man do with- 
out King's Coaches and Cloaks ? Is it such a 
blessedness to have clerks forever pestering you 

10 with bundles of papers in red tape ? A simple 
Diocletian prefers planting of cabbages ; a George 
Washington, no very immeasurable man, does the 
like. One would say, it is what any genuine man 
could do ; and would do. The instant his real 

15 work were out in the matter of Kingship, — away 
with it ! 

Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable 
everywhere a Ki7ig is, in all movements of men. 
It is strikingly shown, in this very War, what be- 

20 comes of men when they cannot find a Chief Man, 
and their enemies can. The Scotch Nation was all 
but unanimous in Puritanism; zealous and of one 
mind about it, as in this English end of the Island 
was always far from being the case. But there 

25 was no great Cromwell among them ; poor tremu- 
lous, hesitating, diplomatic Argyles and suchlike ; 
none of them had a heart true enough for the truth, 
or durst commit himself to the truth. They had 
no leader ; and the scattered Cavalier party in that 

30 country had one : Montrose, the noblest of all the 
Cavaliers; an accomplished, gallant-hearted, splen- 
did man ; Avhat one may call the Hero-Cavalier. 



THE HEBO AS KING 307 

Well, look at it; on the one hand subjects without 
a King; on the other a King without subjects! 
The subjects without King can do nothing; the 
subjectless King can do something. This Mont- 
rose, with a handful of Irish or Highland savages, 5 
few of them so much as guns in their hands, dashes 
at the drilled Puritan armies like a wild whirlwind ; 
sweeps them, time after time, some five times over, 
from the field before him. He was at one period, 
for a short while, master of all Scotland. One 10 
man; but he was a man: a million zealous men, 
but without the one ; they against him were power- 
less ! Perhaps of all the persons in that Puritan 
struggle, from first to last, the single indispensable 
one was verily Cromwell. To see and dare, and 15 
decide; to be a fixed pillar in the welter of uncer- 
tainty ; — a King among them, whether they called 
him so or not. 

Precisely here, however, lies the rub for Cromwell. 
His other proceedings have all found advocates, and 20 
stand generally justified ; but this dismissal of the 
E,ump Parliament and assumption of the Protector- 
ship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly 
grown to be King in England; Chief Man of the 
victorious party in England : but it seems he could 25 
not do without the King's Cloak, and sold himself 
to perdition in order to get it. Let us see a little 
how this was. 

England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now sub- 
dued at the feet of the Puritan Parliament, the 30 
practical question arose. What was to be done with 



308 LECTUBES ON HEBOES 

it? How will you govern these Nations, which 
Providence in a wondrous way has given-up to 
your disposal ? Clearly those hundred surviving 
members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as 

5 supreme authority, cannot continue forever to sit. 
What is to be done? — It was a question which 
theoretical constitution-builders may find easy to 
answer ; but to Cromwell, looking there into the 
real practical facts of it, there could be none more 
complicated. He asked of the Parliament, What it 
was they would decide upon ? It was for the Par- 
liament to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however con- 
trary to Formula, they who had purchased this 
victory with their blood, it seemed to them that 

15 they also should have something to say in it ! We 
will not ^'Por all our fighting have nothing but a 
little piece of paper." We understand that the Law 
of God's Grospel, to which He through us has given 
the victory, shall establish itself, or try to establish 

20 itself, in this land ! 

Por three years, Cromwell says, this question had 
been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They 
could make no answer ; nothing but talk, talk. Per- 
haps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies ; 

25 perhaps no Parliament could in such case make any 
answer but even that of talk, talk ! Nevertheless 
the question must and shall . be answered. You 
sixty men there, becoming fast odious, even despica- 
ble, to the whole nation, whom the nation already 

30 calls Pump Parliament, you cannot continue to sit 
there : who or what then is to follow ? ' Free Par- 
liament,' right of Election, Constitutional Formulas 



THE HERO AS KING 309 

of one sort or the other, — the thing is a hungry 
Fact coming on ns, which we must answer or be 
devoured by it ! And who are you that prate of 
Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament ? 
You have had to kill your King, to make Pride's 5 
Purges, to expel and banish by the law of the 
stronger whosoever would not let your Cause pros- 
per : there are but fifty or three-score of you left 
there, debating in these days. Tell us what we 
shall do ; not in the way of Formula, but of practi- 10 
cable Fact ! 

How they did finally answer, remains obscure to 
this day. The diligent Godwin himself admits that 
he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that this 
poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could 15 
not dissolve and disperse ; that when it came to the 
point of actually dispersing, they again, for the 
tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it, — and Crom- 
well's patience failed him. But we will take the 
favourablest hypothesis ever started for the Parlia- 20 
ment ; the favourablest, though I believe it is not 
the true one, but too favourable. 

According to this version : At the uttermost 
crisis, when Cromwell and his Officers were met on 
the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Eump Members 25 
on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that 
the Eump in its despair was answering in a very 
singular way ; that in their splenetic envious de- 
spair, to keep-out the Army at least, these men 
were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform 30 
Bill, — Parliament to be chosen by the whole of 
England ; equable electoral division into districts ; 



310 LEGTUBES ON HEROES 

free suffrage, and tlie rest of it ! A very question- 
able, or indeed for them an unquestionable thing. 
Keform Bill, free suffrage of Engiislimen ? Why, 
the Eoyalists themselves, silenced indeed but not 

5 exterminated, perhaps outnumber us ; the great nu- 
merical majority of England was always indifferent 
to our Cause, merely looked at it and submitted to 
it. It is in weight and force, not by counting of 
heads, that we are the majority ! And now with 

10 your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, 
sorely won by our swords, shall again launch itself 
to sea ; become a mere hope, and likelihood, small 
even as a likelihood ? And it is not a likelihood ; 
it is a certainty, which we have won, by God's 

15 strength and our own right hands, and do now hold 
here. Cromwell walked down to these refractory 
Members ; interrupted them in that rapid speed of 
their Reform Bill ; — ordered them to begone, and 
talk there no more. — Can we not forgive him ? 

20 Can we not understand him ? John Milton, who 
looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. 
The Reality had swept the Formulas away before 
it. I fancy, most men who were realities in Eng- 
land might see into the necessity of that. 

25 The strong daring man, therefore, has set all 
manner of Formulas and logical superficialities 
against him ; has dared appeal to the genuine 
Fact of this England, Whether it will support 
him or not? It is curious to see how he strug- 

30 gles to govern in some constitutional way ; find 
some Parliament to support him ; but cannot. 
His first Parliament, the one they call Bare- 



THE HERO AS KING 311 

bones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation 
of the Notables. From all quarters of England tlie 
leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nomi- 
nate the men most distinguished by religious repu- 
tation, influence and attachment to the true Cause : 5 
these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanc- 
tioned what was past ; shaped as they could what 
was to come. They were scornfully called Bare- 
hones' s Parliament : the man's name, it seems, was 
not Baretones, but Barbone, — a good enough man. 10 
Nor was it a jest, their work ; it was a most serious 
reality, — a trial on the part of these Puritan ISTota- 
bles how far the Law of Christ could become the 
Law of this England. There were men of sense 
among them, men of some quality ; men of deep 15 
piety I suppose the most of them were. They 
failed, it seems, and broke-down, endeavouring to 
reform the Court of Chancery ! They dissolved 
themselves, as incompetent; delivered-up their 
power again into the hands of the Lord General 20 
Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could. 

What will he do with it? The Lord General 
Cromwell, ^Commander-in-chief of all the Forces 
raised and to be raised ' ; he hereby sees himself, 
at this unexampled juncture, as it were the one 25 
available Authority left in England, nothing be- 
tween England and utter Anarchy but him alone. 
Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and 
England's, there and then. What will he do 
with it? After deliberation, he decides that he 30 
will accept it ; will formally, with public solem- 
nity, say and vow before God and men, " Yes, the 



312 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Eact is so, and I will do the best I can with it ! " 
Protectorship, Instrument of Grovernment, — these 
are the external forms of the thing; worked out 
and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances 
5 be, by the Judges, by the leading Official people, 
^ Council of Officers and Persons of interest in the 
Nation ' : and as for the thing itself, undeniably 
enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there 
was no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan 

10 England might accept it or not ; but Puritan Eng- 
land was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby ! 
— I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticu- 
late, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real 
way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver's ; at least, 

15 he and they together made it good, and always bet- 
ter to the last. But in their Parliamentary articu- 
late way, they had their difficulties, and never knew 
fully what to say to it ! — 

Oliver's second Parliament, properly his first 

20 regular Parliament, chosen by the rule 1 aid-down 
in the Instrument of Government, did assemble, 
and worked; — but got, before long, into bottomless 
questions as to the Protector's right, as to ' usurpa- 
tion,' and so forth; and had at the earliest legal 

25 day to be dismissed. Cromwell's concluding Speech 
to these men is a remarkable one. So likewise to 
his third Parliament, in similar rebuke for their 
pedantries and obstinacies. Most rude, chaotic, all 
these Speeches are ; but most earnest-looking. You 

30 would say, it was a sincere helpless man ; not used 
to speak the great inorganic thought of him, but to 
act it rather ! A helplessness of utterance, in such 



TBB HERO AS KING 313 

bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about 
^ births of Providence ' : All these changes, so many- 
victories and events, were not forethoughts, and the- 
atrical contrivances of men, of me or of men ; it is 
blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them 6 
so ! He insists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful 
emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Crom- 
well in that dark huge game he had been playing, 
the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, 
had /oreseen it all, and played it all off like a pre- 10 
contrived puppetshow by wood and wire ! These 
things were foreseen by no man, he says ; no man 
could tell what a day would bring forth : they were 
^births of Providence,' God's finger guided us on, 
and we came at last to clear height of victory, God's 15 
Cause triumphant in these Nations ; and you as a 
Parliament could assemble together, and say in 
what manner all this could be organised, reduced 
into rational feasibility among the affairs of men. 
You were to help with your wise counsel in doing 20 
that. " You have had such an opportunity as no 
Parliament in England ever had." Christ's Law, 
the Eight and True, was to be in some measure 
made the Law of this land. In place of that, you 
have got into your idle pedantries, constitutionalities, 25 
bottomless cavillings and questionings about written 
laws for my coming here ; — and would send the whole 
matter in Chaos again, because I have no Notary's 
parchment, but only God's voice from the battle- 
whirlwind, for being President among you ! That 30 
opportunity is gone ; and we know not when it will 
return. You have had your constitutional Logic ; 



314 LECTURES ON HEROES 

and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in 
this land. "God be judge between you and me!" 
These are his final words to them : Take you your 
constitution-formulas in your hand; and I my in- 
5 formal struggles, purposes, realities and acts ; and 
" God be judge between you and me ! " — 

We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic 
things the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. Wil- 
fully ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most : a hyp- 

10 ocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon ! 
To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they 
afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the 
reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility 
of him. Try to believe that he means something, 

15 search lovingly what that may be : you will find a 
real speech lying imprisoned in these broken, rude, 
tortuous utterances ; a meaning in the great heart 
of this inarticulate man ! You will, for the first 
time, begin to see that he was a man ; not an enig- 

20 matic chimera, unintelligible to you, incredible to 
you. The Histories and Biographies written of 
this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical genera- 
tions that could not know or conceive of a deep 
believing man, are far more obscure than Crom- 

25 well's Speeches. You look through them only into 
the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. ' Heats 
and jealousies,' says Lord Clarendon himself: ^ heats 
and jealousies,' mere crabbed whims, theories and 
crotchets ; these induced slow, sober, quiet English- 

30 men to lay down their ploughs and work ; and fly 
into red fury of confused war against the best-con- 
ditioned of Kings ! Try if you can find that true 



THE HERO AS KING 315 

Scepticism writing about Belief may have great 
gifts ; but it is really ultra vires there. It is Blind- 
ness laying-down the Laws of Optics. — 

Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same 
rock as his second. Ever the constitutional For- 5 
mula : How came you there ? Show us some Notary 
parchment ! Blind pedants : — " Why, surely the 
same power which makes you a Parliament, that, 
and something more, made me a Protector ! " If 
my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of 10 
wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and 
creation of that ? — 

Parliaments having failed, there remained noth- 
ing but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, 
each with his district, to coerce the Boyalist and 15 
other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of 
Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall not 
carry it, while the Reality is here ! I will go on, 
protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appoint- 
ing just judges, wise managers, at home, cherish- 20 
ing true Gospel ministers ; doing the best I can to 
make England a Christian England, greater than 
old Bome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity ; I, 
since you will not help me ; I while God leaves me 
life ! — Why did he not give it up ; retire into ob- 25 
scurity again, since the Law would not acknow- 
ledge him ? cry several. That is where they mis- 
take. For him there was no giving of it up ! Prime 
Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pombal, 
Choiseul ; and their word was a law while it held : 30 
but this Prime Minister was one that could not get 
'resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and 



316 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

the Cavaliers waited to kill him ; to kill the Cause 
a7id him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no 
return. This Prime Minister could retire no-whither 
except into his tomb. 
5 One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His 
complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Provi- 
dence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must 
bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his 
wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, 

10 coming to see him on some indispensable business, 
much against his will, — Cromwell ' follows him to 
the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory 
style ; begs that he would be reconciled to him, his 
old brother in arms ; says how much it grieves him 

15 to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-sol- 
diers, dear to him from of old : the rigorous Hutch- 
inson, cased in his Republican formula, sullenly 
goes his way. — And the man's head now white ; 
his strong arm growing weary with its long work ! 

20 I think always too of his poor Mother, now very 
old, living in that Palace of his ; a right brave 
woman; as indeed they lived all an honest God- 
fearing Household there : if she heard a shot go-off, 
she thought it was her son killed. He had to come 

25 to her at least once a day, that she might see with 
her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old 

Mother ! What had this man gained ; what had 

he gained ? He had a life of sore strife and toil, to 
his last day. Fame, ambition, place in History ? 

30 His dead body was hung in chains ; his ' place in 
History,' — place in History forsooth ! — has been 
a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness and dis-' 



TBE HEBO AS KING 317 

grace ; and here^ this day, who knows if it is not 
rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured 
to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genu- 
inely honest man ! Peace to him. Did he not, in 
spite of all, accomplish much for us ? We walk 5 
smoothly over his great rough heroic life ; step-over 
his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not 
spurn it, as we step on it! — Let the Hero rest. It 
was not to men's judgment that he appealed; nor 
have men judged him very well. 10 

Precisely a century and a year after this of Puri- 
tanism had got itself hushed-up into decent com- 
posure, and its results made smooth, in 1688, there 
broke-out a far deeper explosion, much more diffi- 
cult to hush-up, known to all mortals, and like to 15 
be long known, by the name of French Revolution. 
It is properly the third and final act of Protestant- 
ism; the explosive confused return of mankind to 
E-eality and Fact, now that they were perishing of 
Semblance and Sham. We call our English Puri- 20 
tanism the second act : " Well then, the Bible is 
true ; let us go by the Bible ! " " In Church," said 
Luther; "In Church and State," said Cromwell, 
" let us go by what actually is God's Truth." Men 
have to return to reality ; they cannot live on sem- 25 
blance. The French Revolution, or third act, we 
may well call the final one; for lower than that 
savage Sansculottism men cannot go. They stand 
there on the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in 
all seasons and circumstances ; and may and must 30 
begin again confidently to build-up from that. The 



318 LECTURES ON HEROES 

French, explosion, like the English, one, got its 
King, — who had no Notary parchment to show 
for himself. We have still to glance for a moment 
at Napoleon, our second modern King. 
5 Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great 
a man as Cromwell. His enormous victories which 
reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode 
mainly in our little England, are but as the high 
stilts on which the man is seen standing ; the stat- 
ic ure of the man is not altered thereby. I find in 
him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far 
inferior sort. No silent walking, through long 
years, with the Awful Unnamable of this Universe ; 
' walking with God,' as he called it ; and faith and 
15 strength in that alone : latent thought and valour, 
content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of 
Heaven's lightning ! Napoleon lived in an age 
when God was no longer believed ; the meaning of 
all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity : 
20 he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but 
out of poor Sceptical Encydopedies. This was the 
length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. 
His compact, prompt, everyway articulate character 
is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great 
25 chaotic inarticulate Cromwell's. Instead of ' dumh 
Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentous 
mixture of the Quack withal ! Hume's notion of 
the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, 
will apply much better to Napoleon than it did 
30 to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, — where 
indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth 
at all. An element of blamable ambition shows 



THE HERO AS KING 319 

itself, from the first, in this man; gets the victory- 
over him at last, and involves him and his work 
in ruin. 

' False as a bulletin ' became a proverb in Napo- 
leon's time. He makes what excuse he could for 5 
it : that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to 
keep-up his own men's courage, and so forth. On 
the whole, there are no excuses. A man in no case 
has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in the long- 
run, better for IsTapoleon too if he had not told any. lo 
In fact, if a man have any purpose reaching beyond 
the hour and day, meant to be found extant next 
day, what good can it ever be to promulgate lies ? 
The lies are found-out ; ruinous penalty is exacted 
for them. No man will believe the liar next time 15 
even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last 
importance that he be believed. The old cry of 
wolf! — A Lie is ?? o- thing ; you cannot of nothing 
make something; you make nothing at last, and lose 
your labour into the bargain. 20 

Yet Napoleon had a sincerity : we are to dis- 
tinguish between what is superficial and what is 
fundamental in insincerity. Across these outer 
manoeuverings and quackeries of his, which were 
many and most blamable, let us discern withal that 25 
the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable feel- 
ing for reality ; and did base himself upon fact, so 
long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of 
Nature better than his culture was. His savans, 
Bourrienne tells iis, in that voyage to Egypt were 30 
one evening busily occupied arguing that there 
could be no God. They had proved it, to their 



320 LECTURES ON HEROES 

satisfaction, by all manner of logic. Napoleon 
looking up into the stars, answers, ^' Very in- 
genious. Messieurs : but who made all that ? " The 
Atheistic logic runs-off from him like water; the 
5 great Fact stares him in the face : " Who made all 
that ? " So too in Practice : he, as every man that 
can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, 
through all entanglements, the practical heart of 
the matter; drives straight towards that. When 

10 the steward of his Tuileries Palace was exhibit- 
ing the new upholstery, with praises and demon- 
stration, how glorious it was, and how cheap withal, 
Napoleon, making little answer, asked for a pair of 
scissors, dipt one of the gold tassels from a Avin- 

15 dow-curtain, put it in his pocket, and walked on. 
Some days afterwards, he produced it at the right 
moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary ; 
it was not gold but tinsel ! In St. Helena, it is 
notable how he still, to his last days, insists on 

20 the practical, the real. " Why talk and complain ; 
above all, why quarrel with one another? There 
is no result in it ; it comes to nothing that one can 
do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing ! " He 
speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers ; 

25 he is like a piece of silent strength in the middle 
of their morbid querulousness there. 

And accordingly was there not what we call a 
faith in him, genuine so far as it went ? That this 
new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in 

30 the Prench Eevolution is an insuppressible Pact, 
which the whole world, with its old forces and in- 
stitutions, cannot put down ; this was a true insight 



THE HEEO A8 KING 321 

of Ms, and took his conscience and enthusiasm along 
with it, — a faith. And did he not interpret the 
dim purport of it well ? ^ La carrih^e ouverte aux 
talents, The implements to him who can handle 
them : ' this actually is the truth, and even the 5 
whole truth ; it includes whatever the French Revo- 
lution, or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, 
in his first period, was a true Democrat. And yet 
by the nature of him, fostered too by his military 
trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a true 10 
thing at all, could not be an anarchy : the man had 
a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth of 
June (1792), Bourrienne and he sat in a coffee- 
house, as the mob rolled by : ISTapoleon expresses 
the deepest contempt for persons in authority that 15 
they do not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of 
August he wonders why there is no man to com- 
mand these poor Swiss ; they would conquer if 
there were. Such a faith in Democracy, yet hatred 
of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all 20 
his great work. Through his brilliant Italian Cam- 
paigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben, one would 
say, his inspiration is : ' Triumph to the Erench 
^Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian 
' Simulacra that pretend to call it a Simulacrum ! ' 25 
Withal, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, 
how necessary a strong Authority is ; how the 
Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. 
To bridle-in that great devouring, self-devouring 
French Revolution ; to tame it, so that its intrinsic 30 
purpose can be made good, that it may become 
organic, and be able to live among other organisms 



322 LECTURES ON HEROES 

and formed things, not as a wasting destruction 
alone : is not this still what he partly aimed at, as 
the true purport of his life ; nay, what he actually 
managed to do ? Through Wagrams, Austerlitzes ; 

5 triumph after triumph, — he triumphed so far. 
There was an eye to see in this man, a soul to dare 
and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All 
men saw that he was such. The common soldiers 
used to say on the march : " These babbling Avocats, 

10 up at Paris ; all talk and no work ! What wonder 
it runs all wrong ? We shall have to go and put 
our Petit Caporal there ! " They went, and put 
him there ; they and France at large. Chief -con- 
sulship. Emperorship, victory over Europe ; — till 

15 the poor Lieutenant of La Fh^e, not unnaturally, 
might seem to himself the greatest of all men that 
had been in the world for some ages. 

But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan- 
element got the upper hand. He apostatised from 

20 his old faith in Facts, took to believing in Sem- 
blances ; strove to connect himself with Austrian 
Dynasties, Popedoms, with the old false Feudalities 
which he once saw clearly to be false ; — considered 
that he would found ^' his Dynasty " and so forth ; that 

25 the enormous French Revolution meant only that ! 
The man was ' given-up to strong delusion, that he 
should believe a lie ' ; a fearful but most sure thing. 
He did not know true from false now when he 
looked at them, — the f earfulest penalty a man 

30 pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self and 
false ambition had now become his god : seZ/-decep- 
tion once yielded to, all other deceptions follow 



THE HERO AS KING 323 

naturally more and more. What a paltry patch- 
work of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mum- 
mery, had this man wrapt his own great reality 
in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His 
hollow Pope's- Concordat, pretending to be a re- 5 
establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to 
be the method of extirpating it, " la vaccine de la 
religion " ; his ceremonial Coronations, consecra- 
tions by the old Italian Chimera in Notre-Dame, — 
"wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it," as 10 
Augereau said, "nothing but the half-million of 
men who had died to put an end to all that"! 
Cromwell's Inauguration was by the Sword and 
Bible; what we must call a genuinely true one. 
Sword and Bible were borne before him, without 15 
any chimera : were not these the real emblems of 
Puritanism ; its true decoration and insignia ? It 
had used them both in a very real manner, and 
pretended to stand by them now ! But this poor 
Napoleon mistook : he believed too much in the 20 
Dupedbility of men; saw no fact deeper in man 
than Plunger and this ! . He was mistaken. Like 
a man that should build upon cloud ; his house 
and he fall down in confused wreck, and depart out 
of the world. 25 

Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists ; 
and might be developed, were the temptation strong 
enough. ' Lead us not into temptation ! ' But it* is 
fatal, I say, that it he developed. The thing into 
which it enters as a cognisable ingredient is doomed 30 
to be altogether transitory; and, however huge it 
may look, is in itself small. Napoleon's working, 



324 LECTURES ON HEROES 

accordingly, what was it with, all the noise it made ? 
A flash as of gunpowder wide-spread ; a blazing-up 
as of dry heath. For an hour the whole Universe 
seems wrapt in smoke and flame; but only for an 

5 hour. It goes out : the Universe with its old moun- 
tains and streams, its stars above and kind soil 
beneath, is still there. 

The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To 
be of courage ; this ISTapoleonism was unjust, a f alse- 

10 hood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The 
heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, hold- 
ing it tyrannonsly down, the fiercer would the world's 
recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays it- 
self with frightful compound-interest. I am not 

15 sure but he had better have lost his best park of 
artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the 
sea, than shot that poor German Bookseller, Palm ! 
It was a palpable tyrannous injustice, which no 
man, let him paint an inch thick, could make-out to 

20 be other. It bnrnt deep into the hearts of men, 
it and the like of it ; suppressed fire flashed in the 
eyes of men, as they thought of it, — waiting their 
day ! Which day came : Germany rose round him. 
— What Napoleon did will in the long-run amount 

25 to what he did justly ; what Nature with her laws 
will sanction. To what of reality was in him ; to 
that and nothing more. The rest was all smoke 
and waste. La carri^re ouverte aux talents: that 
great true Message, which has yet to articulate and 

30 fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inarticu- 
late state. He was a great ebauche, a rude-draught 



THE HEBO AS KING 325 

never completed; as indeed what great man is 
other ? Left in too rude a state, alas ! 

His notions of the world, as he expresses them 
there at St. Helena, are almost tragical to consider. 
He seems to feel the most unaffected surprise that it 5 
has all gone so ; that he is flung-out on the rock here, 
and the World is still moving on its axis. France 
is great, and all-great ; and at bottom, he is France. 
England itself, he says, is by Nature only an append- 
age of France ; " another Isle of Oleron to France." lo 
So it was by Nature, by Napoleon-Nature ; and yet 
look how in fact — Here am I ! He cannot under- 
stand it : inconceivable that the reality has not cor- 
responded to his program of it; that France was 
not all-great, that he was not France. ' Strong delu- 15 
sion, ' that he should believe the thing to be which 
is not ! The compact, clear-seeing, decisive Italian 
nature of him, strong, genuine, which he once had, 
has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, in a turbid 
atmosphere of French fanfaronade. The world was 20 
not disposed to be trodden-down underfoot; to be 
bound into masses, and built together, as he liked, 
for a pedestal to France and him: the world had 
quite other purposes in view! Napoleon's aston- 
ishment is extreme. But alas, what help now ? He 25 
had gone that way of his ; and Nature also had gone 
her way. Having once parted with Eeality, he 
tumbles helpless in Vacuity; no rescue for him. 
He had to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did ; 
and break his great heart, and die, — this poor Na- 30 
poleon: a great implement too soon wasted, till it 
was useless : our last Great Man .' 



326 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

Our last, in a double sense. For here finally 
these wide roamings of onrs through so many times 
and places, in search and study of Heroes, are to 
terminate. I am sorry for it : there was pleasure 
5 for me in this business, if also much pain. It is a 
great subject, and a most grave and wide one, this 
which, not to be too grave about it, I have named 
Her o-ivor ship. It enters deeply, as I think, into the 
secret of Mankind's ways and vitalest interests in 

10 this world, and is well worth explaining at present. 
With six months, instead of six days, we might have 
done better. I promised to break-ground on it; I 
know not whether I have even managed "to do that. 
I have had to tear it up in the rudest manner in 

15 order to get into it at all. Often enough, with these 
abrupt utterances thrown-out isolated, unexplained, 
has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, 
patient candour, all-hoping favour and kindness, 
which I will not speak of at present. The accom- 

20 plished and distinguished, the beautiful, the wise, 
something of what is best in England, have listened 
patiently to my rude words. With manv feelings, I 
heartily thank you all ; and say, Good be with you 
all! 



SUMMARY 



LECTURE I 

THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN 

MYTHOLOGY 

Heroes : Universal History consists essentially of their 
united Biographies. Religion not a man's church-creed, but 
his practical belief about himself and the Universe : Both 
with Men and Nations it is tfte One fact about them which 
creatively determines all the rest. Heathenism : Christian- 
ity : Modern Scepticism. The Hero as Divinity. Paganism 
a fact ; not Quackery, nor Allegory : Not to be pretentiously 
' explained ' ; to be looked at as old Thought, and with sym- 
pathy, (p. 1.) — Nature no more seems divine except to the 
Prophet or Poet, because men have ceased .to think : To the 
Pagan Thinker, as to a child-man, all was either godlike or 
God. Can opus : Man. Hero-worship the basis of Religion, 
Loyalty, Society. A Hero not the ' creature of the time ' : 
Hero-worship indestructible. Johnson : Voltaire. (10.) — 
Scandinavian Paganism the Religion of our Fathers. Ice- 
land, the home of the Norse Poets, described. The Edda. 
The primary characteristic of Norse Paganism, the imper- 
sonation of the visible workings of Nature. Jotuns and the 
Gods. Fire : Frost : Thunder : The Sun : Sea-Tempest. 
Mythus of the Creation : The Life-Tree Igdrasil. The mod- 
ern ' Machine of the Universe.' (21.) — The Norse Creed, 
as recorded, the summation of several successive systems : 

327 



328 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Originally the shape given to the national thought by their 
first ' Man of Genius. ' Odin : He has no history or date ; 
yet was no mere adjective, but a man of flesh and blood. 
How deified. The World of Nature, to every man a Fantasy 
of Himself. (28.) — Odin the inventor of Runes, of Letters 
and Poetry. His reception as a Hero : the pattern Norse- 
man ; a God : His shadow over the whole History of his 
People. (36.) — The essence of Norse Paganism, not so 
much Morality, as a sincere recognition of Nature : Sincerity 
better than Gracefulness. The Allegories, the after-creations 
of the Faith. Main practical Belief : Hall of Odin : Valkyrs : 
Destiny : Necessity of Valour, Its worth : Their Sea-Kings, 
Woodcutter Kings, our spiritual Progenitors. The growth 
of Odinism. (40.) — The strong simplicity of Norse lore 
quite unrecognised by Gray. Thor's veritable Norse rage: 
Balder, the white Sungod. How the old Norse heart loves 
the Thunder-god, and sports with him: Huge Brobdignag 
genius, needing only to be tamed-down, into Shakspeares, 
Goethes. Truth in the Nors? Songs : This World a show. 
Thor's Invasion of Jotunheim. The Ragnarok, or Twilight 
of the Gods : The Old must die, that the New and Better 
may be born. Thor's last appearance. The Norse Creed a 
Consecration of Valour. It and the whole Past a possession 
of the Present. (46.) . 



LECTURE II 

THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM 

The Hero no longer regarded as a God, but as one god- 
inspired. All Heroes primarily of the same stuff ; differing 
according to their reception. The welcome of its Heroes, 
the truest test of an epoch. Odin: Burns, (p. 56.) — Ma- 
homet a true Prophet ; not a scheming Impostor. A Great 
Man, and therefore first of all a sincere man : No man to be 
judged merely by his faults. David the Hebrew King. Of 



SUMMABY 329 

all acts for man repentance the most divine : The deadliest 
sin, a supercilious consciousness of none. (61.) — Arabia 
described. The Arabs always a gifted people ; of wild 
strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these. Their Ke- 
ligiosity : Their Star- worship : Their Prophets and inspired 
men; from Job downwards. Their Holy Places. Mecca, 
its site, history and government. (63.) — Mahomet. His 
youth : His fond Grandfather. Had no book-learning : 
Travels to the Syrian Fairs ; and first comes in contact with 
the Christian Keligion. An altogether solid, brotherly, 
genuine man : A good laugh, and a good flash of anger in 
him withal. (68.) — Marries Kadi j ah. Begins his Prophet- 
career at forty years of age. Allah ATchar; God is great : 
Islam; we must submit to God. Do we not all live in 
Islam? Mahomet, 'the Prophet of God.' (71.)— The 
good Kadijah believes in him : Mahomet's gratitude. His 
slow progress : Among forty of his kindred, young Ali alone 
joined him. His good Uncle expostulates with him : Ma- 
homet,, bursting into tears, persists in his mission. The 
Hegira. Propagating by the sword : First get your sword : 
A thing will propagate itself as it can. Nature a just 
umpire. Mahomet's Creed unspeakably better than the 
wooden idolatries and jangling Syrian Sects extirpated by 
it. (77.) — The Koran, the universal standard of Mahome- 
tan life : An imperfectly, badly written, but genuine book : 
Enthusiastic extempore preaching, amid the hot haste of 
wrestling with flesh-and-blood and spiritual enemies. Its 
direct poetic insight. The World, Man, human Compassion ; 
all wholly miraculous to Mahomet. (86.) — His religion 
did not succeed by ' being easy ' : None can. The sensual 
part of it not of Mahomet's making. He himself, frugal ; 
patched his own clothes ; proved a hero in a rough actual 
trial of twenty-three years. Traits of his generosity and 
resignation. His total freedom from cant. (94.) — His 
moral precepts not always of the superfinest sort ; yet is 
there always a tendency to good in them. His Heaven and 
Hell sensual, yet not altogether so. Infinite Nature of Duty. 



330 LECTURES ON HEROES 

The evil of sensuality, in the slavery to pleasant things, not 
in the enjoyment of them. Mahometanism a religion heart- 
ily believed. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from 
darkness into light: Arabia first became alive by means of 
it. (98.) 

LECTUKE III 

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE ; SHAKSPEAKE 

The Hero as Divinity or Prophet, inconsistent with the 
modern progress of science : The Hero Poet, a figure com- 
mon to all ages. All Heroes at bottom the same ; the dif- 
ferent sphere constituting the grand distinction : Examples. 
Varieties of aptitude, (p. 104.) — Poet and Prophet meet in 
Vates: Their Gospel the same, for the Beautiful and the 
Good are one. All men somewhat of poets ; and the high- 
est Poets far from perfect. Prose, and Poetry or musical 
Thought. Song a kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech : 
All deep things are Song. The Hero as Divinity, as Prophet, 
and then only as Poet, no indication that our estimate of 
the Great Man is diminishing : The Poet seems to be losing 
caste, but it is rather that our Notions of God are rising 
higher. (107.) — Shakspeare and Dante, Saints of Poetry. 
Dante : His history, in his Book and Portrait. His scholas- 
tic education, and its fruit of subtlety. His miseries : Love 
of Beatrice : His marriage not happy. A banished man : 
Will never return, if to plead guilty be the condition. His 
wanderings : ' Come e duro calle.^ At the Court of Delia 
Scala. The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made 
its home more and more in Eternity. His mystic, un- 
fathomable Song. Death: Buried at Ravenna. (114.) — His 
Divina Commedia a Song : Go deep enough, there is music 
everywhere. The sincerest of Poems : It has all been as if 
molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. Its Intensity, 
and Pictorial power. The three parts make-up the true 
Unseen World of the Middle Ages: How the Christian 



SUMMABY 331 

Dante felt Good and Evil to be the two polar elements of 
this Creation. Paganism and Christianism. (120.) — Ten 
silent centuries found a voice in Dante. The thing that is 
uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul differs alto- 
gether from what is uttered by the outer. The ' uses ' of 
Dante : We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas 
it saves us. Mahomet and Dante contrasted. Let a man do 
his work ; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. 
(131.) — As Dante embodies musically the Inner Life of the 
Middle Ages, so does Shakspeare embody the Outer Life 
which grew therefrom. The strange outbudding of English 
Existence which we call ' Elizabethan Era. ' Shakspeare the 
chief of all Poets : His calm, all-seeing Intellect : His mar- 
vellous Portrait-painting. (135.) — The Poet's first gift, as 
it is all men's, that he have intellect enough, — that he be 
able to see. Intellect the summary of all human gifts: 
Human intellect and vulpine intellect contrasted. Shak- 
speare's instinctive unconscious greatness : His works a part 
of Nature, and partaking of her inexhaustible depth. Shak- 
speare greater than Dante ; in that he not only sorrowed, 
but triumphed over his sorrows. His mirthfulness, and 
genuine overflowing love of laughter. His Historical Plays, 
a kind of National Epic. The Battle of Agincourt : A noble 
Patriotism, far other than the 'indifference' sometimes 
ascribed to him. His works, like so many windows, through 
which we see glimpses of the world that is in him. (140.) 
— Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism: 
Out of this Shakspeare too there rises a kind of Universal 
Psalm, not unfit to make itself heard among still more sacred 
Psalms. Shakspeare an ' unconscious Prophet ' ; and therein 
greater and truer than Mahomet. This poor Warwickshire 
Peasant worth more to us than a whole regiment of highest 
Dignitaries : Indian Empire, or Shakspeare, — which ? An 
English King, whom no time or chance can dethrone: A 
rallying-sign and bond of brotherhood for all Saxondom : 
Wheresoever English men and women are, they will say to 
one another, ' Yes, this Shakspeare is ours ! ' (148.) 



332 LBCTUBSS ON HEROES 



LECTURE rv 

THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER ; REFORMATION : KNOX ; 
PURITANISM 

' The Priest a kind of Prophet ; but more familiar, as the 
daily enlightener of daily life. A true Reformer he who 
appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible 
force. The finished Poet often a symptom that his epoch 
itself has reached perfection, and finished. Alas, the bat- 
tling Reformer, too, is at times a needful and inevitable 
phenomenon : Offences do accumulate, till they become in- 
supportable. Forms of Belief, modes of life must perish ; 
yet the Good of the Past survives, an everlasting possession 
for us all. (p. 154.) — Idols, or visible recognised Symbols, 
common to all Religions : Hateful only when insincere : The 
property of every Hero, that he come back to sincerity, to 
reality: Protestantism and 'private judgment.' No living 
communion possible among men who believe only in hear- 
says. The Hero-Teacher, who delivers men out of darkness 
into light. Not abolition of Hero-worship does Protestantism 
mean ; but rather a whole World of Heroes, of sincere, 
believing men. (161.) — Luther; his obscure, seemingly- 
insignificant birth. His youth schooled in adversity and 
stern reality. Becomes a Monk. His religious despair : 
Discovers a Latin Bible : No wonder he should venerate the 
Bible. He visits Rome. Meets the Pope's fire by fire. At 
the Diet of Worms : The greatest moment in the modern 
History of men. (171.) — The Wars that followed are not 
to be charged to the Reformation. The Old Religion once 
true : The cry of ' No Popery ' foolish enough in these days. 
Protestantism not dead : German Literature and the French 
Revolution rather considerable signs of life ! (181.) — How 
Luther held the sovereignty of the Reformation and kept 
Peace while he lived. His written Works : Their rugged 
homely strength : His dialect became the language of al/ 



SUMMARY 333 

writing. No mortal heart to be called braver, ever lived in 
that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valour : Yet a 
most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as the truly- 
valiant heart ever is : Traits of character from his Table- 
Talk : His daughter's Deathbed : The miraculous in Nature. 
His love of Music. His Portrait. (185.) — Puritanism the 
only phasis of Protestantism that ripened into a living faith : 
Defective enough, but genuine. Its fruit in the world. The 
sailing of the Mayflower from Delft Haven the beginning of 
American Saxondom. In the history of Scotland properly 
but one epoch of world-interest, — the Reformation by Knox : 
A ' nation of heroes ' ; a believing nation. The Puritanism 
of Scotland became that of England, of New England. 
(191.) — Knox ' guilty ' of being the bravest of all Scotch- 
men : Did not seek the post of Prophet. At the siege of 
St. Andrew's Castle. Emphatically a sincere man. A Gal- 
ley-slave on the River Loire. An Old-Hebrew Prophet, in 
the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. 
(196.) — Knox and Queen Mary : ' Who are you, that pre- 
sume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm ? ' 
'Madam, a subject born within the same.' His intolerance 
— of falsehoods and knaveries. Not a mean acrid man; 
else he had never been virtual President and Sovereign of 
Scotland. His unexpected vein of drollery : A cheery social 
man ; practical, cautious-hopeful, patient. His ' devout im- 
agination ' of a Theocracy, or Government of God. Hilde- 
brand wished a Theocracy ; Cromwell wished it, fought for 
it : Mahomet attained it. In one form or other, it is the one 
thing to be struggled for. (199.) 



LECTURE V 

THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS 

The Hero as Man of Letters altogether a product of these 
new ages : A Heroic Soul in very strange guise. Literary 



334 LECTURES ON EEBOES 

men; genuine and spurious. Fichte's 'Divine Idea of the 
World ' : His notion of the True Man of Letters. Goethe, 
the Pattern Literary Hero. (p. 206.) — The disorganised 
condition of Literature, the summary of all other modern 
disorganisations. The Writer of a true Book our true mod- 
ern Preacher. Miraculous influence of Books : The Hebrew 
Bible. Books are now our actual University, our Church, 
our Parliament. With Books, Democracy is inevitable. 
Thought the true thaumaturgic influence, by which man 
works all things whatsoever. (212.) — Organisation of the 
' Literary Guild ' : Needful discipline ; * priceless lessons ' 
of Poverty. The Literary Priesthood, and its importance to 
society. Chinese Literary Governors. Fallen into strange 
times ; and strange things need to be speculated upon. 
(222.) — An age of Scepticism: The very possibility of 
Heroism formally abnegated. Benthamism an eyeless Hero- 
ism. Scepticism, Spiritual Paralysis, Insincerity : Heroes 
gone-out ; Quacks come-in. Our brave Chatham himself 
lived the strangest mimetic life all along. Violent remedial 
revulsions : Chartisms, French Revolutions : The Age of 
Scepticism passing away. Let each Man look to the mend- 
ing of his own Life. (228.) — Johnson one of our Great 
English Souls. His miserable Youth and Hypochondria: 
Stubborn Self-help. His loyal submission to what is really 
higher than himself. How he stood by the old Formulas: 
Not less original for that. Formulas; Their Use and Abuse. 
Johnson's unconscious sincerity. His Twofold Gospel, a 
kind of Moral Prudence and clear Hatred of Cant. His 
writings sincere and full of substance. Architectural noble- 
ness of his Dictionary. Boswell, with all his faults, a true 
hero-worshipper of a true Hero. (236.) — Rousseau a mor- 
bid, excitable, spasmodic man ; intense rather than strong. 
Had not the invaluable 'talent of Silence.' His Face, ex- 
pressive of his character. His Egoism : Hungry for the 
praises of men. His books : Passionate appeals, which did 
once more struggle towards Reality : A Prophet to his Time ; 
as he could, and as the Time could. Rosepink, and artificial 



SUMMARY 335 

bedizenment. Fretted, exasperated, till the heart of him went 
mad : He could be cooped, starving, into garrets ; laughed 
at as a maniac ; but he could not be hindered from setting 
the world on fire. (247.) — Burns a genuine Hero, in a 
withered, unbelieving, secondhand Century. The largest 
soul of all the British lands, came among us in the shape of 
a hard-handed Scottish Peasant. His heroic Father and 
Mother, and their sore struggle through life. His rough 
untutored dialect : Affectionate joyousness. His writings a 
poor fragment of him. His conversational gifts : High 
duchesses and low ostlers alike fascinated by him. (252.) 

— Kesemblance between Burns and Mirabeau. Official 
Superiors : The greatest ' thinking-faculty ' in this land su- 
perciliously dispensed with. Hero-worship under strange 
conditions. The notablest phasis of Burns's history his 
visit to Edinburgh. Tor one man who can stand prosperity, 
there are a hundred that will stand adversity. Literary 
Lionism. (256.) 

LECTURE VI 

THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN 
REVOLUTIONISM 

The King the most important of Great Men; the sum- 
mary of all the various figures of Heroism. To enthrone the 
Ablest Man, the true business of all Social procedure ; The 
Ideal of Constitutions. Tolerable and intolerable approxi- 
mations. Divine Rights and Diabolic Wrongs, (p. 262.) 

— The world's sad predicament ; that of having its Able- 
Man to seek^ and not knowing in what manner to proceed 
about it. The era of Modern Revolutionism dates from 
Luther. The French Revolution no mere act of General 
Insanity : Truth clad in hell-fire ; the Trump of Doom to 
Plausibilities and empty Routine. The cry of ' Liberty and 
Equality ' at bottom the repudiation of sham Heroes. Hero- 
worship exists forever and everywhere ; from divine adora- 



336 LECTURES ON HEROES 

tion down to the common courtesies of man and man : The 
soul of Order, to which all things, Revolutions included, 
work. Some Cromwell or Napoleon the necessary finish of 
a Sansculottism. The manner in which Kings were made, 
and Kingship itself first took rise. (267.) — Puritanism a 
section of the universal war of Belief against Make-believe. 
Laud a weak ill-starred Pedant ; in his spasmodic vehemence 
heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity. Universal 
necessity for true Eorms ; How to distinguish between True 
and False. The nakedest Reality preferable to any empty 
Semblance, however dignified. (273.) — The work of the 
Puritans. The Sceptical Eighteenth century, and its consti- 
tutional estimate of Cromwell and his associates. No wish 
to disparage such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; a 
most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. The 
rugged outcast Cromwell, the man of them all in whom one 
still finds human stuff. The One thing worth revolting for. 
(277.) — Cromwell's ' hypocrisy,' an impossible theory. His 
pious Life as a Farmer until forty years of agp. His public 
successes honest successes of a brave man. His participa- 
tion in the King's death no ground of condemnation. His eye 
for facts no hypocrite's gift. His Ironsides the embodiment 
of this insight of his, (282.) — Know the men that may be 
trusted : Alas, this is yet, in these days, very far from us. 
Cromwell's hypochondria : His reputed confusion of speech : 
His habit of prayer. His speeches unpremeditated and full 
of meaning. His reticences ; called ' lying ' and ' dissimula- 
tion': Not one falsehood proved against him. (289.) — 
Foolish charge of ' ambition.' The great Empire of Silence : 
Noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his de- 
partment ; silently thinking, silently hoping, silently work- 
ing. Two kinds of ambition ; one wholly blamable, the 
other laudable, inevitable : How it actually was with Crom- 
well. (296.) — Hume's Fanatic-Hypocrite theory. How 
indispensable everywhere a King is, in all movements of 
men. Cromwell, as King of Puritanism, of England. Con- 
stitutional palaver : Dismissal of the Rump Parliament. 



SUMMARY 337 

Cromwell's Parliaments and Protectorship : Parliaments 
having failed, there remained nothing for him but the way 
of Despotism. His closing days : His poor old Mother. It 
was not to men's judgments that he appealed ; nor have men 
judged him very well. (304. ) — The French Revolution, the 
• third act ' of Protestantism. Napoleon, infected with the 
quackeries of his age : Had a kind of sincerity, — an instinct 
towards the practical. His faith, — ' the Tools to him that 
call handle them,' the whole truth of Democracy. His 
heart-hatred of Anarchy. Finally, his quackeries got the 
upper hand : He would found a ' Dynasty ' : Believed 
wholly in the dupeability of Men. This Napoleonism was 
unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. (317.) 



ABBREVIATIONS TO NOTES 



BTc Book. 

C. & M. . . . Carlyle's Critical and Miscellaneous 

Essays. 
Cent. Diet. . . Century Dictionary. 

Cf. Compare. 

Ch Chapter. 

C's L. & S. . . Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and 

Speeches with Elucidations. 

D. & F. ... Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman 

Empire. 
Fr. Bev. . . . Carlyle's Erench Revolution. 

Inf. Dante's Inferno. 

TT Paragraph. 

pp Pages. 

Pari. H. . . . Parliamentary History. 

Purg Dante's Purgatorio. 

Sec Section. 

Ser Series. 

T. C. . . . . Fronde's Thomas Carlyle: History of 

the First Forty Years of his Life. 

338 



NOTES 



" Thomas Carlyle, with his natural taste for what is manly 
and daring in character, has suffered no heroic trait in his 
favorites to drop from his biographical and historical pict- 
ures." — Emerson, Essay on Heroism. 

LECTURE I 
The Hero as Divinity 

Page 1, line 2. Great Men : Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. II, 
Ch. VIII: "Great Men are the inspired (speaking and act- 
ing) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a 
chapter is completed from epoch to epoch and by some 
named History." 

1, 7. Hero-worship : This term was probably borrowed 
from David Hume's Philosophical Essays, Vol. IV, Sec. V, 
Various Forms of Polytheism ; Allegory, Hero-Worship : 
"The same principles naturally deify mortals, superior 
in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero- 
worship," etc. pp. 444, 445 (Boston, 1854). 

1, 12. Universal History : For elaboration of this thought, 
see Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. Ill, On History Again. 
Carlyle's conception of History as "Biography of Great 
Men" has been much criticised by scientific historians and 
philosophers ; see Mazzini's censure. Introduction, p. xxiv. 

3, 25. religion : The word, as used here, suggests both 
derivations, accepted by modern etymologists ; from relegere, 
to read or ponder again ; from religere, to bind again. See 
Cent. Diet. 

339 



340 LECTURES ON HEROES 

4, 7, 8. Time . . . resting on Eternity: Cf. Carlyle's 
C. & M. Essays, Vol. Ill, Characteristics : " Yet Time reposes 
on Eternity," etc, 

5, 7. stocks : From A.-S. stocc, trunk of tree ; used in 
Bible for idolatry ; see Isaiah xliv : 19, etc. ; possibly refer- 
ence here to Druidism. 

5, 32. Quackery and dupery: Unique, effective words, 
often used by Carlyle. 

6, 17. Grand Lamaism: Eeligion of Thibet and Mon- 
golia ; priests are called Grand Lamas. 

6, 19. Mr. Turner's Account : Samuel Turner, sent to 
Thibet by Warren Hastings, in behalf of East India Company. 

6, 30. methods of their own: For Mr. Turner's descrip- 
tion of the competitive, riotous methods, see An Account of 
Embassy, by Captain Samuel Turner (London, 1800), Ch. 
VIII, pp. 310-316. 

7, 12. Allegory : Carlyle may refer especially to Hume's 
Essays, Vol. IV, Sec. V, Polytheism ; Allegory. 

8, 7, 8. a Symbol . . . the Universe : Cf . Goethe's Faust, 
Part II, Act V, — 

" AU we see before us passing, 
Sign and symbol is alone ; 
Here, what thought can never reach to, 
Is by semblances made known ; 
What man's word may never utter 
Done in act — in symbol shown." 

9, 6. imbroglio : From Italian, imbrogliare, to embroil, 
— confusion, intricacy ; a favorite word with Carlyle. 

9, 23. fancy of Plato's: See Plato's Eepublic, Bk. VII: 
"After this, I said, imagine the enlightenment or ignorance 
of our nature in a figure ; behold ! human beings living in a 
sort of underground den," etc. 

10, 15. This green flowery rock-built earth: Platonic 
thoughts expressed in Carlyle's vivid, pictorial diction. 

10, 28. mere words : See Job xxxv : 16. 

11, 3. Nescience: "But in Carlyle's mind this convic- 
tion of the immeasurable ignorance (or Nescience as he pre- 



NOTES 341 

fers to call it in antithesis to science) which underlies all 
our knowledge was not in the least ' a deep meaning,' but 
a constant conviction, which it took a great genius like his 
to interpret to all who were capable of learning from him." 
R. H. Hutton, Modern Guides to English Thought in Mat- 
ters of Faith (London, 1887), pp. 17, 18. 

11, 8. mystery of Time : See Wisdom of Solomon, ii : 5. 

11, 20. Force : Force was often used by earlier philoso- 
phers and physicists in this sense of energy or power. See 
Cent. Diet. ; see, also, Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, 
XLIII, c. 

11, 22. There is not a leaf : Cf . Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, 
Ch. XI : " The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there are 
Forces in it and around it, though working in inverse 
order ; else how could it rot ? " 

11, 32. Leyden jars : Invented by Vanleigh, of Leyden ; 
used for electrical experiments. 

12, 16. All was Godlike : Quotation from last para- 
graph of Richter's Quintus Fixlein, in Carlyle's translations. 

12, 17. the giant Jean Paail: "Richter has been called 
an intellectual Colossus ; and in'truth it is somewhat in this 
light that we view him." Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. I, 
Richter, p. 17. Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, 1763-1825. 

12, 23. Ishmaelitish man : See Gen. xvi : 11, 12. 

12, 30. Sabeans : See 64, 81. 

12, 32. Worship is transcendent wonder: Cf. similar 
passage. Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. X. 

13, 6, 7 : through every star : This passage suggests 
Tennyson's The Higher Pantheism, — 

" The sun, the moou, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains, 
Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns! " 

Also, Sartor Resartus, Bk. Ill, Ch. VIII. 

13, 12, 13. a window . . . Infinitude : Another quota- 
tion from Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. XI : " Rightly viewed, 
no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as win- 
dows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infini- 



342 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

tude itself." Similar thoughts are found in Richter's Titian, 
Cycles, 20, 64, and Levana, 11, IV, Sec. 37 ; III, Sec. 17. 

13, 24. St. Chrysostom : John, Patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, 347-407. See E. W. Tarrar's Lives of the Fathers, 
Vol. II, pp. 615-693 (Edinburgh, 1889). 

13, 27. Shekinah : See Exodus xxv : 22 ; xxvi : 34 ; quo- 
tation, also, in Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. X. 

14, 3. Novalis: Eriedrich von Hardenburg (Novalis), 
1772-1801. See Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. II, Novalis; 
quotation from Schriften. 

14, 13. mystery of God : Cf. Psalm cxxxix : 14. 
14, 23, 24. divinity is in man and Nature : Suggests 
Tennyson's Elower in the Crannied Wall, — 

'* Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower, — but, if I could understand 
What you are, root and all and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

16, 3. King : This derivation of king is refuted by later 
etymologists, who derive the word from cyng, cyning, chief 
of tribe. The Cent. Diet, says: "There is no connection 
with can and cunning.'''^ 

16, 22, 23. Hero-worship . . . gone out: Cf. similar 
thoughts in Carlyle's Past and Present, Bk. I, Ch. VI, Hero- 
Worship. 

17, 20. The great man . . . lightning: Cf. "She 
[Nature] produces in every age men suited to be great men ; 
but the times do not allow them to develop their talents." 
Eontenelle, Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes. 

18, 19, 20. Boswell . . . Johnson : See Lecture V, pp. 
245-247. 

18, 22. Voltaire : Carlyle reproduced this scene of Vol- 
taire's visit to Paris in Essays, Vol. II, Voltaire, and in Er. 
Rev., Bk. I, Ch. IV. His description was largely borrowed 
from M6moires sur Voltaire par Longchamp et Wagniere, 
ses Secretaires (Paris, 1826), Vol. II, pp. 466, 467. 



NOTES 343 

19, 2. Ferney: After 1758, Voltaire spent most of his 
time at Ferney, in Switzerland. 

19, 6. Calases : Voltaire's efforts in behalf of persecuted 
Galas family. See Guizot's History of France, Vol. V, 
Ch. LV, pp. 205-207 ; also, John Morley's Voltaire, Ch. V, 
p. 222 (New York, 1872). 

19,10. persifleur: " He is no great Man but only a great 
Persifieur, a man for whom life and all that pertains to it, 
has at best but a despicable meaning." Carlyle's C. & M. 
Essays, Vol. II, Voltaire. 

19, 14. Queen Antoinette : See Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. IV, The Diamond Necklace. 

19, 15. Douanier : Custom-house official. 

19, 18. Va bon train : Make good speed ; go fast. 

19, 28. Pontiff of Encyclopedism : Reference to Johnson*s 
Dictionary and "Johnsonese" style. 

21, 21. jokuls : Icelandic, glaciers ; a paragraph noted for 
forceful diction. 

22, 8, 9 : Elder or Poetic Edda : Edda of Ssemund, trans- 
lated by A. S. Cottle (Bristol, 1797); also translated by Ben- 
jamin Thorpe (London, 1866). 

22, 14. several other books : Snorro (or Snorri) Sturle- 
son (Sturlason or Sturluson), born 1178, was author of 
Heimskringla, The Gylfa, Skalldskoparmal (Scaldic Songs), 
Hattalykill, or Key of the Wise, and Frsedibsekur, or Manu- 
als of Science. 

22, 20. Prose Edda : Translated by G. W. Dasent (Stock- 
holm, 1842); also by J. Blackwell, added to Mallet's North- 
ern Antiquities, translated by Bishop Percy (London, 1847). 

23, 11, 12. Asgard, Jotunheim : For description of their 
cosmogony, see Benjamin Thorpe's Northern Mythology, 
Vol. I, pp. 10, 11; also Mary E. Litchfield's The Nine 
Worlds (Boston, 1890). 

23, 21. Ladrones Islands : Islands in Pacific, discovered 
by Magellan, 1819, and named Ladrones, Islands of Thieves, 
because of character of natives. In 1668 missionaries were 
sent by Mariana, queen of Austria, and the name was 



344 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

changed to Mariana Islands. For account of inhabitants, 
see First Voyage round the World by Magellan, edited by 
Lord Stanley (London, 1874), pp. 9, 68-70; also Captain 
Anson's Voyages (1742), Bk. Ill, Ch. I ; Freycinet's Voyage 
autour du Monde, II. 

24, 6. Hymir (also Ymir) : Created by the meeting of 
flames and frozen vapor. See Thorpe's Northern Mythol- 
ogy, Vol. I, pp. 3-5. 

24, 9. Thor : 

" I am the God Thor, 
I am the War God, 
I am the Thunderer, 
Here in m.y Northland, 
My fastness and fortress, 
Reign I forever! " 

Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn ; Saga of King Olaf . 
24, 13. Hammer: 

" In another place 
Thor's hammer gleamed o'er Thor's red-hearded face." 

William Morris, The Earthly Paradise; The Lovers of 
Godrin. For Eddaic account of Thor's hammer or mal- 
let, see Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 417. 

24, 17. Balder (or Baldur) : Invulnerable to everything 
except the mistletoe. See Dasent's translation of Edda, pp. 
70-73 (Stockholm, 1842) ; see, also, 46, 18. 

24, 24. God Wiinsch (or Wish) : See Grimm's Teutonic 
Mythology, Vol. I, pp. 138-144 (London, 1883). 

25, 1. Aegir : For description, see R. B. Anderson's 
Norse Mythology, pp. 39, 40, 343-349. 

25, 15. incessant invasions: Danish invasions, about 
802-880. 

25, 27. recognition of forces of Nature: "Carlyle's 
characteristic delight in Odin and the Scandinavian my- 
thology is a mere reflection of this strong appreciation of the 
religion of the volcano, the thunder-cloud, and the lightning- 
flash," etc. R. H. Button, Modern Guides to English Thought 
in Matters of Faith, p. 25. 



NOTES 345 

26, 28. constructing a world : 

' From Ymir's flesh the earth was formed, 
And from his hones the hills," etc. 

Ssemund's Edda, Lay of Vafthrudmir; see, also, H. W. 
Mabie's Stories retold from the Eddas (Boston, 1882). 

27, 1. Hyper-Brobdignagian : lieference to Giant-Land 
in Swift's Gulliver's Travels ; Brobdingnag. 

27, 8. Tree Igdrasil (or Yggdrasil) : See Dasent's trans- 
lation of Edda, pp. 19-21 ; also Thorpe's Northern Mythol- 
ogy, Vol. I, pp. 11-13 ; also The Sacred Tree, in Religion 
and Myth, by Mrs. J. H. Philpot (London, 1897). 

27, 14. Nomas (or Normas) : Eates. 

"The Normas besprinkle 
The Ash Yggdrasil." 

Lord Lytton, Harold, Bk. VIII. 

27, 25, 26. Tree of Existence : Cf. Past and Present, 
Bk. I, Ch. VI. 

27, 28. the infinite conjugation : Quotation from Car- 
lyle's Fr. Rev., Bk. Ill, Ch. I: "The all of things is an 
infinite conjugation of the verb, To Do." 

27, 31. Ulfila (also written Ulfilas, Ulphilas, and Wul- 
filas) : About 311-381, Gothic missionary and Bible trans- 
lator. See W. P. Walsh's Heroes of the Mission Field, 
pp. 34-43 (New York, 1890). 

28, 3. Machine of the Universe : Sarcastic reference to 
theories of utilitarianism, etc. ; see explanation 229, 1-16. 

29, 3. such System of Thought: Suggests Tennyson's 
Locksley Hall, — 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages, one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen' d with the process of the 
suns." 

30, 16. Trebisond (or Trebizond) : Ancient Trapezus in 
Asia Minor. In 1204 Alexius entered the city, was crowned 
Grand Comenus, and founded an empire which lasted until 



346 LECTURES ON HEROES 

1462, when conquered by Mohammed II. Alexius III re- 
built Monastery of Sumelas, and issued "golden bull" 
which became its charter. Cardinal Bessarion wrote The 
Praise of Trebizond {'EyKib/xiov Tpaire^ovvros). 

Council of Trent: Ecumenical Council, 1545-1563. See 
Ecumenical Councils (in Historical Studies) by Eugene 
Lawrence, pp. 187-197 (New York, 1876). 

Athanasiuses : Bishop of Alexandria, about 296-373, op- 
ponent of Arius ; Carlyle's characteristic plurals used here. 

Dantes, Luthers: They represent unknown poets and 
reformers of Norse history. 

31, 4, 5. Heimskringla : 3 vols., Chronicles of the Kings 
of Norway, translated by Samuel Laing, revised by R. B. 
Anderson (London, 1889). 

31, 14. Saxo Grammaticus : Danish historian, died 
about 1204. 

31, 19. Torfaeus: Thormodr Torfason, Icelandic histo- 
rian, 1639-1719. 

31, 30. Wuotan: See Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, 
Vol. I, pp. 62, 131-133, 160 (London, 1883); see, also, Ander- 
son's Norse Mythology, pp. 233-236, The Historical Odin. 

32, 17. Lope: Felix Lope de Vega, Spanish dramatist, 
1562-1635. See Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, 
Vol. II, Ch. XIII. 

32, 21. Adam Smith : 1723-1790. Dissertation on the 
Origin of Language was added to later editions of Theory 
of Moral Sentiments. See John Rae's Adam Smith (Lon- 
don and New York, 1895). 

33, 26, 27. knows not what he is: Cf. Plato's Char- 
mides: " For self-knowledge would certainly be maintained 
by me to be the very essence of knowledge," etc. 

34, 16. Arundel-marble : Ancient sculptures, with tab- 
lets dating back to 263 e.g., collected by Thomas Harvard, 
Earl of Arundel, and later given to Oxford University. 

35, 20. The number Twelve: See Grimm's Teutonic 
Mythology, Vol. I, p. 26. 

35, 32. Cestus of Venus : The embroidered girdle ; see 



NOTES 347 

Iliad, XIV, 214 ; also Schiller's Letters on Esthetic Culture ; 
also Carlyle's Life of Schiller, pp. 128-130. 

36, 10. Odin's Runes : Run (Gaelic, secret) was applied 
to all mysterious writing or speech. See Odin's Rune Song 
in Elder Edda, — 

" I know that I hung 
On a wind-rocked tree 
Nine whole nights," etc. 

See, also, Mallet's Northern Antiquities (London, 1847), 
pp. 225-233. 

36, 20. Atahualpa (also written Atahuallpa) : Inca or 
Prince of Peru, killed 1533. See Prescott's Conquest of 
Peru, Vol. I, Bk. I, Ch. II. 

36, 22. Dies : God. An attempt was made to convert 
Atahualpa to Christianity by Father Valverde. 

38, 12. Wednesbury (or Wodenburg) : Town in Stafford. 

Wansborough (or Wanborough) : Town in Surrey. 

Wanstead : Town in Essex. 

Wandsworth : Town in Surrey. 

38, 21. For this Odin . . . God: "It must after all be 
confessed that we cannot discern anything very certain 
concerning Odin, but only this, that he was the founder of 
a new religion," etc. Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 83. 

39,7. Thought: "Life is but thought." Coleridge. 

40, 15. The essence of the Scandinavian: Carlyle's 
imagination over-emphasizes the poetic nature of Norse my- 
thology and hides many of its sterner phases. See the 
Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions, by Rev. George 
Matheson (London, Edinburgh, and New York, 1894), pp. 
247-275, The Message of the Teuton: "What is the myth- 
ology of the Eddas but a history of the survival of the 
fittest, and a delineation of how that survival has been 
effected through struggle?" etc. p. 270. 

41, 30. Valkyrs (or Valkyries) : Maidens sent to bring 
warriors to Valhalla ; see Thomas Gray's The Fatal Sisters. 

41, 30, 31. Hall of Odin (or Valhalla) : 



348 LECTUEES ON HEROES 

" For all the nobler sons of mortal men, 
On battle-field have met their death, and now 
Feast in Valhalla, in my father's hall." 

Matthew Arnold, Balder Dead. 

42, 19, 20. Valour . . . value : Both are derived from 
Latin valere, to be strong, to be worth. 

42, 21. get rid of Fear : Cf . Macbeth III, ii : 

*' Our fears do make us traitors." 

43, 6. Old kings, about to die : 

" Thus sailed the Sea-king, wrapped in smoke and fire, 
On his last voyage across the stormy wave, 
The blazing log-ship for his funeral pyre, 
The ocean for his grave." 

A. F. Major's Songs and Sagas of the Norsemen ; The 
Burial of the Sea-King (London, 1894). 

43, 17, 18. Blakes and Nelsons : English admirals ; 
Blake 1598-1657 ; Nelson, 1758-1805. See Captain A. T. 
Mahan's Life of Nelson (1897). 

43, 19. Agamemnon : See Iliad, XI, 91-661 ; also Troi- 
lus and Cressida, I, iii. 

43, 21. Hrolf (or Eolf ) : See Heimskringla, Vol. I, 31, 
308-317; II, 50; III, 236-237. 

44, 32. Banyan-tree: Sacred tree of India, with far- 
reaching roots and branches. 

45, 9. Cow Adumbla (also Audhumbla) : See 16, 31. 
Eddaic account in Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 403. 

46, 4. Gray's fragments : Thomas Gray's poems, The 
Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin. 

46, 5, 6. Pope . . . Homer : Cf. T. C, Vol. II, p. 78, Jour- 
nal: "Pope's 'Homer's Odyssey,' surely a very false, and 
though ingenious and talented, yet bad translation." 

46, 17. knuckles grow white: "He clutched the haft 
of his hammer with his hands, so that the knuckles whit- 
ened." Dasent's translation of Edda, p. 52. 

46, 18. Balder dies : See 24, 17 ; also Matthew Arnold's 
poem. Balder Dead. 



J^OTES 349 

46, 21. Hermoder : Greek Hermes, swiftest of gods. 

47, 8. Uhland: Ludwig Uhland, 1787-1862; wrote 
monograph, My thus von Thor (Stuttgart, 1830). See Men- 
zel's German Literature, Vol. Ill, p. 212. 

48, 2. Brobdignag : See 27, 1. 

48, 6. Jack the Giant-killer: See Mallet's Northern 
Antiquities, p. 435, and J. C. Murray's Ballads and Songs 
of Scotland, pp. 36, 37 (1874). 

48, 9. world-tree : See 27, 8. 

48, 11. shoes of swiftness : Jack possessed " an invisible 
coat, a cap of wisdom, shoes of swiftness, and a resistless 
sword." 

48, 17. Amleth : See The Sources of the Plot, Kolfe's 
edition of Hamlet, pp. 12-14 (New York, 1881). 

48, 30. greatness of soul : Cf. Ovid's Metam., XIII : " It 
is the mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in our im- 
mortal soul." 

49, 5. Hindoo M3rthologist : Reference may be to mytho- 
lyrical poem, Gitagovinda, composed by Jayadeva in twelfth 
century. The ethical teaching refers to the vanity of ob- 
jects of sense. 

49,6. German Philosopher: "In all German systems, 
since the time of Kant, it is the fundamental principle to 
deny the existence of matter." Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. II, Novalis. 

49, 8. We are such stuff : Favorite quotation with Car- 
lyie,- 

" We are such stuff 
As Dreams are made on ; and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Tempest, IV, i. 

49, 27. the Giant Skrymir : Eddaic account of Thor's 
journey in Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 373. 

50, 29 ; 51, 2. Cat ; Old Woman : See, also, Thorpe's 
Northern Mythology, Eddaic account, Vol. I, pp. 62, 63; 
Dasent's translation of Edda, pp. 59-61. 



350 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

51, 16, 17. Time . . . wrestle : Similar thought in Schil- 
ler's The Immutable and Pope's Pastorals, Winter, 88. 

51, 32; 52, 1. Mimer-smithy : Mimer was the god of 
wisdom. Odin embalmed his head and consulted it as an 
oracle. 

52, 6, 7. rare old Ben: "O rare Ben Jonson ! " Sir 
John Young, Epitaph. 

52, 9. American Backwoods : Possibly reference to writ- 
ings of Irving or Cooper. 

52, 11. Twilight of the Gods (or Ragnarok) : See Mat- 
thew Arnold's Balder Dead. 

"Far to the south beyond the blue, there spreads 
Another heaven, the boundless," etc. 

Eddaic account in Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 451. 

52, 28. phoenix fire-death : The tradition of the Arabian 
phoenix, which, once a cycle, sets fire to its nest of spices 
and rises from the ashes ; emblem of immortality. See 
Herodotus, II, 73 ; the legend is also found in Persian and 
Sanskrit literature ; see, also, Tempest III, iii, and Moore's 
Paradise and the Peri. 

53, 6. King Olaf : Olaf II, 995-1030. See Carlyle's Early 
Kings of Norway. Also Snorro's Heimskringla, Vol. I, pp. 
3, 47-50, etc. 

54, 7. Pindar's time : About 522-443 b.c. Eor Pindar's 
description of Nemean games, see Nem., II, 4, 5 and Olymp., 
XIII, 44. 

54, 19. Consecration of Valour: Cf. discussion of Norse 
religion in Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 106. Also The 
Faiths of the World, St. Giles Lectures (New York, 1882), 
pp. 213-232. 

55, 7. Meister : This passage is found in Carlyle's trans- 
lation of Wilhelm Meister' s Apprenticeship and Travels, Vol. 
Ill, Ch. X, pp. 72, 73 (London, 1874). 



NOTES 351 

LECTURE II 

The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet: Islam 

57, 6. welcoming a Great Man : Same thought ex- 
panded in Past and Present, Bk. I, Ch. VI. 

57, 14. ever the same kind : Cf. 37, 12 : "A hero is a 

hero at all points." 

57, 20. deliquium of love : Literally, want or defect ; in 
chemistry, melting process ; also used, as here, melting or 
maudlin mood. 

58, 17. all the good: Cf. Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol.- I, Goethe : ' ' We are firm believers in the maxim that 
for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay 
essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his 
bad." 

58, 21. current hypothesis: Cf. Washington Irving's 
Mahomet and his Successors, Bk. I, Ch, XXXIX. Eor 
varied studies of Mahomet, see Ali Ameer's Critical Exami- 
nation of the Life and Teachings of Mahomet ; W. Muir's 
Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, Ch. XXXVII ; Dr. Gustav Weil's 
Mohammed der Prophet (Stuttgart, 1843) ; A. Sprenger's 
Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed (Berlin, 1861). 

58, 27. Pococke : Edward Pocock, or Pococke, English 
orientalist, 1604-1691 ; author of Specimen Historise Ara- 
bum. 

Grotius : Hugo Grotius, Dutch publicist and theologian, 
1583-1645. 

58, 28. pigeon: For traditions about Mahomet, see 
Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. I, pp. Ixiii, Ixiv ; see, also, 
Henry VI, I, iii, — 

"Was Mahomet inspired with a dove? 
Thou with an eagle art inspired." 

59, 31. Cagliostro : Giuseppe Balsamo, or Count Cagli- 
ostro of Palermo, 1743-1795. A charlatan who sold eter- 
nal youth. See Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. Ill, Count 



852 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Cagliostro ; Goethe's Cagliostro's Stammbaum ; Alexander 
Dumas' Joseph Balsamo, or Memoirs of a Physician. 

60, 11. Mirabeau : Cf . Carlyle's discussion of Mirabeau's 
sincerity in Fr. Rev., Vol. I, Bk. X, Ch. VI. 

61, 10. Infinite Unknown : The same thought is in 
T. C. Life in London, Journal, Oct. 14, 1869. 

61, 24. inspiration of the Almighty : See Job xxxii : 8 ; 
2 Tim. iii : 16. 

62, 12. man according to God's own heart : See Acts 
xiii : 22. 

62, 21, 22. It is not in man : See Jer. x : 23. 
62, 23. repentance : Cf . Acts xxvi : 20, adapted. 

62, 27. pure: Carlyle uses "pure" here in sense of 
Kantian philosophy, — non-sensuous. See Cent. Diet. 

63, 22, 23. Savage inaccessible, etc. : Vivid pictorial 
description. 

64, 4. Arab character ; Discussion of Arab traits in 
Sale's Preliminary Discourse (Wherry's Commentary on 
Quran, Vol. I, Sec. I, pp. 65, 66) ; also Gibbons' D. & R, 
Ch. L, edited as Life of Mahomet, by Dean Milman and 
W. Smith, pp. 21-45. 

64, 19. Jewish kindred : According to tradition, Ishmael, 
married in Arabia and had twelve sons. Cf. Gen. xvi ; 12 ; 
xvii : 18 ; xxv : 18. 

64, 23. Sale : George Sale, 1680-1736 ; made transla- 
tion of Koran, 1734. 

64, 31. Sabeans : also Sabians, from Saba, host (of 
heaven). Sale's description of Sabian religion is found in 
Wherry's Commentary on Quran, Vol. I, Sec. I, pp. 34-36. 

65, 15. Book of Job: " It evinces knowledge, not slight 
nor casual, of Arabian deserts, Judean mountain-ravines, 
mines of the Sinai peninsula, beasts and plants of the Nile 
region ; it contemplates modes of life, both pastoral and 
urban ; it purports to represent a distant patriarchal time, yet 
breathes the air of a later civilization." John F. Genung's 
Epic of the Inner Life, Study of Job, p. 91 (Boston, 1891.) 
See, also, Coleridge's Table-Talk, p. 310 (New York, 1853). 



NOTES 353 

65, 29, 30. the Horse : See Job xxxix : 19. 

65, 31. he ' laughs ' : See Job xli : 29. 

66, 7, 8. Black Stone ; Caabah : Tradition declared that 
the Black Stone, in the shrine of Caabah at Mecca, was 
composed of basalt and crystals, had been sent to Abraham 
from heaven, and that its natural dazzling whiteness had 
been blackened by the kisses of impure men and women. 
See Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. I, pp. cxxvi, cciv. 

66, 9. Diodorus Siculus : Greek historian of first cen- 
tury, born in Sicily ; he wrote Historical Library, covering 
1138 years. 

66, 12. Silvestre de Sacy: Antoine Isaac Silvestre de 
Sacy, 1758-1838, French orientalist. 

66, 21, 22. Well . . . Hagar : See Gen. xxi : 19. 

66, 32. Keblah : Arabic word, meaning opposite ; point 
of adoration. 

67, 1. Delhi ... to Morocco : These places represent 
the extremes of Mahometan kingdom. 

67, 29, 30. Keepers of the Caabah: Irving says this 
guardianship ' ' was connected with civil dignities and privi- 
leges, and gave the holder of it the control of the sacred 
city." Bk. I, Ch. II. 

68, 30. Grandfather : Abd al Motalleb, guardian of the 
Caabah. He gave the prophet his name, Mohammed, 
"praised." 

68, 31. Father, Abdallah: According to tradition, he 
was so beautiful that on the day of his marriage to Amina, 
two hundred virgins of the Koreish tribe died of broken 
hearts. See Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. I, pp. cclix, cclxx, 9. 

69, 22, 23. Sergius, the Nestorian Monk : Muir doubts 
the exact narrative. See Vol. II, Ch. II. 

70, 30. taciturn : " The temperament of Mohammed 
was melancholic and in the highest degree nervous. He was 
generally low-spirited, thinking, and restless ; and he spoke 
little and never without necessity." Spenger's Mohammed. 

71, 12. horse-shoe vein: Eeference to Walter Scott's 
Redgauntlet, Letter Eleventh : "Ye maun ken he had a 

2a 



354 LECTURES ON HEROES 

way of bending his brows, that men saw the visible mark of 
a horse-shoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been 
stamped there." 

71, 20. Kadijah (also written Khadijah, Cadijah, Cha- 
dija, etc.) : See Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. II, Ch. II, and 
Prideaux's Life of Mahomet, p. 11. 

72, 28. Here am I : See 1 Sam. iii : 5. 

73, 6. Mount Hara : Three miles from Mecca. 
Mount Sinai : See Ex. xix : 18. 

74, 5. Heraclius : Byzantine emperor, 575-641. 
Chosroes : Persian king, 590-628. A deputy of Mecca 

said ; "I have seen the Chosroes of Persia and the Csesar 
of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects 
like Mahomet among his companions." Gibbons' D. & P., 
Ch. L, p. 130. 

74, 10 : Sheik (also written sheikh) : A venerable man, 
lord of tribe ; later, preacher in mosque. 

74, 17. Month Ramadhan (also written Ramadan, Ra- 
madzan, etc.) : The '<hot" or ninth month. 

75, 8. Islam (Arabic, salem, salm, peace or salvation ; 
some Moslem writers attempt to derive it from Ishmael) : 
See Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. II, pp. 60-70. 

75, 20, 21. the wisest, the best : Cf. Dryden's OEdipus, 

111,1,- 

" Whatever is, is in its causes just." 

Also, Pope's Essay on Man, I, 289, — 

" One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." 

76, 18. Though He slay me : See Job xiii : 15. 

76, 20. Annihilation of Self: This idea was borrowed 
from Goethe's Renunciation and Novalis' Self-Annihila- 
tion: "The true philosophical act is Annihilation of self" 
(Selbsttodtung). Novalis, Schriften, II; see, also, Car- 
lyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. II, Novalis. 

76, 29. inspiration : See 61, 24. 

76, 30; 77, 1. know . . . Belief: Cf. 2 Tim. i: 12. 
This quotation and 77, 18, 19, from Novalis, Schriften, II. 



NOTES 355 

77, 22. Ayesha : A beautiful daughter of Abu Beker, 
an earnest disciple of Mahomet. See Muir's Life of Ma- 
homet, II, pp. 100, 111, 254, 265, III, 14-16, 229, 236-238. 

78, 5, 6. gained but thirteen followers : Cf. Gibbon's 
D. & F., Ch. L, p. 114: "Three years were silently em- 
ployed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes, the first 
fruits of his mission." 

78, 31. died by assassination : Ali was fourth Caliph. 
See Muir's Annals of the Early Caliphate ; also, Irving's 
Mahomet and his Successors, Bk. II. For account of All's 
services, see Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. II, pp. 48, 66, 
IV, pp. 38, 34. 

79, 15. good Uncle : Another uncle, Abu Lahab, wealthy 
and proud, was Mahomet's bitter opponent. 

80, 9. laid plots : Mahomet was nearly strangled in the 
Caabah, but was rescued by Abu Beker ; later assassinations 
were also planned, but were foiled. 

80, 14, 15. hide in caverns : Tradition locates one cave 
on Mount Thor, near Mecca. When the Koreish pursuers 
came to the mouth of the cave, an acacia tree suddenly 
sprang up to hide the entrance, and a pigeon's nest and 
spider's web rested on the branches. 

81, 2. Hegira : Instituted by Omar, second Caliph. 

82, 12. Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons : About 
772-785. Carlyle's defence of Mahomet's propagation by 
the sword is weak and disjointed. Cf. Muir's Life of 
Mahomet, Vol. IV, Ch. XXXVII : « The sword of Mahomet 
and the Coran are the most fatal enemies of Civilization, 
Liberty, and Truth which the world has yet known." See, 
also, James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Religions, Ch. XI, 
Sec. 7 ; also, Wherry's Commentary on Quran, Sec. II, p. 84. 

83, 30, 31. chaff . . . wheat : See Jer. xxiii: 28 ; Luke 
xxii: 81, etc. 

83, 80. Not how much chaff : A forceful antithesis. 

84, 11. Homoiousion : (Gr.) Literally, similar substance. 
This sect believed the Son was of like essence as the Father ; 
opposed to Homoousion, literally, same substance. This 



356 LECTURES ON HEROES 

sect maintained that the Son was of the same essence as the 
Father. 

85, 16. Duty : Cf . Eccles. xii : 13. 

85, 28. Sons of Adam : See Dent, xxxii : 8. 

86, 7. Koran : More properly Quran, from quraa, to 
read. For import of word see Sale's Preliminary Discourse, 
Sec. Ill, p. 96. 

86, 30. toilsome reading : See Sale's Preliminary Dis- 
course, Sec. Ill, pp. 102-104 ; Rodwell's Koran, notes. 

87, 13. flung pell-mell into a chest : Authority for state- 
ment is doubted by Muir, Life of Mahomet, Introduction, 
p. iv. 

87, 13, 14. published it: Two years after Mahomet's 
death Zeid von Thabit, former secretary, began to gather 
text from "date-leaves, and tablets of white stone, and 
from the breasts of men." Weil's Mohammed, p. 348. 

87, 26. written in Heaven: According to tradition, an 
ornamental volume from God's throne was brought by Ga- 
briel and revealed to Mahomet. See Quran, Ch. XLV, 17-19. 

88, 10. Prideaux: Humphrey Prideaux, 1648-1724; 
author of Life of Mahomet ; also see translations and com- 
mentaries by Sale, Geiger, Burton, Muir, Rodwell, Hughes' 
Dictionary of Islam, and E. M. Wherry's Commentary on 
the Quran. 

88, 18. deceit prepense : For Mahomet's hallucinations, 
etc., see Irving's Life of Mahomet, Vol. I, Ch. XXXIX; 
Kenan's Studies in Religious History and Criticism; W. W. 
Ireland's Blot upon the Brain. "The student of history 
will trace for himself how the pure and lofty aspirations of 
Mahomet were first tinged and then gradually debased by a 
half-unconscious self-deception.'* Muir's Life of Mahomet, 
Vol. IV, Ch. XXXVIL 

88, 27, 28. breathless intensity: "And of all the Suras 
[chapters] it must be remarked that they were intended not 
for readers but for hearers . . . and that they were left, as 
the imperfect sentences show, to the manner and suggestive 
action of the reciter." The Koran ; Introduction, J. M. Rod- 



NOTES 357 

well. "Der Styl des Korans ist, seinem Inhalt und Zweck 
gemass, streng, gross, furchtbar, stellenweis, warhalft erlia- 
ben." See Goethe's Mahomet, Sammt Werke, Vol. II (Stutt- 
gart, 1854-1855). Sale says of style of Quran, Preliminary 
Discourse, Sec. Ill, pp. 103, 104: "The style of the Quran 
is generally beautiful and fluent, especially where it imitates 
the prophetic manner and Scripture phrases." 

89, 28. Gabriel : See 87, 26. 

90, 2. Bedouin (Arabic bedawi, or badw, a desert) : 
For account of Bedouin traits see Gibbon's D. and F., 
Ch. L, p. 17. 

90, 5. mess of pottage : See Gen. xxv : 34. 

90, 23. Prophet Hud : See Sale's Preliminary Discourse 
in Wherry's Commentary, Sec. I, p. 21. Hud is supposed 
to be Heber (1 Chron. vii : 31). He was prophet of tribe of 
Ad, and was sent to reclaim the Adites from idolatry. A 
storm of hot winds raged seven nights and eight days, and 
all the tribe perished except those who went away with Hud. 

91, 18. Mahomet . . . miracles: See Muir's Life of 
Mahomet, Vol. I, p. Ixv ; Vol. II, pp. 257, 262 ; also Quran, 
Ch. VI, 10, 109-111, Ch XI, 3, etc. 

92, 3. cattle : See Quran, Ch. VI, 138 ; Ch. XL, 79. 

92, 21. Ye have compassion : See Matt, xviii : 33 ; 
1 Pet. iii : 8. 

93, 4. world . . . Nothing: Cf. Sartor Eesartus, Bk.III, 
Ch. VIII: "Stately they tread the Earth as if it were a 
firm substance ; fool ! the Earth is but a film." 

95, 3. Not happiness: Cf. similar thoughts in Sartor 
Eesartus, Bk. II, Ch. IX; The Everlasting Yea; Wotton 
Eeinfred, p. 92 ; T. C, Vol. I, p. 389. 

95, 29. clouting : A.-S. clut, a patch ; see Josh, ix : 5 
and Jer. xxxviii : 11. 

96, 6. His last words : For account of Mahomet's last 
days, see Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, pp. 242-278. 
"After a little he prayed in a whisper, — 'Lord, grant me 
pardon, and join me to the companionship on high,' " etc, 
p. 279. 



358 LECTURES ON HEROES 

96, 13. The Lord giveth: See Job i : 21. 
96, 21. Seid's daughter: See Muir's Life of Mahomet, 
Vol. IV, pp. 101, 102. 

96, 32. No, by Allah : See 77, 29. 

97, 11. Greek Emperors : According to tradition, He- 
raclius sought Mahomet's advice, and later became a con- 
vert. See Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, pp. 50-54. 

97, 21. War of Tabuc: Sept. -Oct., 630. See Muir's 
Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, Ch. XXVIII. 

98, 5. No Dilettantism : Cf. T. C, Vol. II, p. 92 : "The 
sin of this age is Dilettantism," etc. ; also Past and Present, 
Bk. Ill, Ch. II. 

99, 4. propriety of giving alms : Prescribed alms, Zacat, 
were enjoined ; voluntary gifts, Sadakat, were urged. 

99, 19. work of doctors : See Muir's Life of Mahomet, 
Vol. I, pp. xvi, XX, XXV, li. 

100, 8, 9. Meister's Travels : This passage is found in 
Carlyle's translation, Vol. Ill, Ch. XV, p. 143 (London, 1874). 

100, 22. Month Ramadhan : See 74, 17. 

101, 6. man's actions : Cf . Fletcher's On an Honest 
Man's Fortune, — 

" Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." 

101, 20, 21. chief end of man : See Westminster Cate- 
chism. 

101,23. Bentham: 1748-1832. Utilitarian reformer ; 
Paley: William Paley, 1743-1805, theologian, author of 
Natural Religion, etc. Cf. T. C, Vol. II, pp. 72, 73, Jour- 
nal, Sept. 9, 1830. "What is Jeremy Bentham's signifi- 
cance ? Altogether intellectual, logical ... I mean that 
the Utilitarians have logical machinery and do grind fiercely 
and potently on their own foundations." Paley 's Science 
of Morality discussed by Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, 
CXI. 

102, 10. It is not Mahomet : Litotes is a favorite rhe- 
torical figure with Carlyle. 



NOTES 359 

103, 7. Malays: Inhabitants of Peninsula, southern 
point of Asia. 

Papuans : Inhabitants of New Guinea, in Eastern Archi- 
pelago. 

103, 18. Granada : Conquered by Saracens, 711-714 ; 
Delhi: conquered by Saracens, 635-642. See Irving's 
Mahomet and his Successors, Bk. II, Ch, LVIII ; also Irv- 
ing's Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada. 

LECTURE III 
The Hero as Poet. Dante ; Shakspeare 

105, 10. all sorts of men : Cf. Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. I, Burns: "How does the poet speak to men with 
power, but by being still more a man than they ? " See, 
also, 37, 12, and 57, 14. 

105, 18. Mirabeau : See 60, 11. 

105, 25. Austerlitz Battles : Napoleon's defeat of the 
Austrians and Russians, Dec. 2, 1805. 

105 , 26. Marshals : Tallard, Villeroi, Berwick and others. 
Carlyle's admiration for prowess leads him here into extrav- 
agant hero-worship. 

105, 27 : Turenne : Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, French 
general, 1611-1675. See G. P. R. James, Memoirs of Great 
Commanders, Vol. II. 

105,31. Petrarch: Francesco Petrarch, 1304-1374. Boc- 
caccio: Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375. See Macaulay's 
Essays, Vol. I, On the Principal Italian writers. 

106, 2, 3. Burns . . . Mirabeau: Carlyle means that 
the intellectual acumen of Burns would have fitted him for 
statescraft, as well as for poetry. 

106, 9. circumstance : Cf . Wilhelm Meister, Vol. I, Bk. 
I, Ch. XVII: "The web of life is woven," etc.; also, 
Byron's Don Juan, Canto V, 17. 

106, 16. Addison: This suggests Addison's essay, A 
Vision of Justice. 

106, 19. Samson : See Judges xiii : 24 ; xvi. 



360 LECTURES ON HEROES 

107, 2. Vates (L.) : A bard or prophet, — 

"Poetry is itself a thing of God, 
He made his prophets poets." 

Bailey, Eestus, Proem. 

"And thus the poet is at once a teacher, a prophet, and 
a friend of gods and men." Wilhelm Meister, Vol. I, 
Bk. II, Ch. II. 

107, 12. Divine Idea : This paragraph suggests philo- 
sophic theories of Goethe, Schiller, and Fichte. For further 
discussion of Fichte' s Divine Idea, see Carlyle's C. & M. 
Essays, Vol. I, State of German Literature, pp.' 68-70. 

107, 9. the open secret : Cf. Wilhelm Meister's Travels, 
Ch. XIII, p. 106: "And while Nature unfolded the open 
secret of her beauty," etc. (London, 1874). 

107,20,22. Universe . . . Thought of God : "The Uni- 
verse is a thought of God." Schiller's Essays, ^sthetical 
and Philosophical, Letter 4. 

108, 28. Consider the lilies : See Matt, vi : 28. 

109, 8. the Beautiful: "Of the Beautiful men are 
seldom capable, oftener of the Good." Wilhelm Meister's 
Travels, Ch. VII, p. 41 (London, 1874). "In days of yore 
nothing was holy but the beautiful." Schiller, Die Gotter 
Griechenlands, St. 6. 

109, 12. Vauxhall : See Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Ch.VL 
109, 19. no perfect Poet : Cf . 

" God is the perfect Poet, 
Who in creation acts his own conceptions." 

Browning, Paracelsus, Sc. II. 

109, 21. We are all poets : Cf. Emerson's Literary 
Ethics, " All men are poets at heart." 

109, 25. Saxo Grammaticus : See 31, 14. 

110, 17. German Critics : For elaboration of thought, 
see Carlyle's Essays, Vol. I, The State of German Litera- 
ture, pp. 65-68, comments on the Schlegels, Schiller, Fichte, 
Herder, Kichter, and Goethe. 

111, 31. Poetry . . . musical Thought : Among many 



NOTES 361 

definitions of poetry may Ibe cited, "Poetry is simply the 
most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of 
saying things." Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, 
Heinrich Heine. "Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative lan- 
guage, expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, 
and insight of the human soul." E. C. Stedman, Nature 
and Elements of Poetry. 

112, 6, 7. Apocalypse of Nature : Cf . expanded thought 
in Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. VIII, 

112, 30. Sceptical Dilettantism : See 98, 5. 

113, 11, 12. Tiaraed and Diademed : These forms are 
rarely used as adjectives or substantives, though given in 
some dictionaries. 

114, 27. five centuries : Dante died 1321. 

114, 31. Giotto (1276-1337) : Another famous portrait 
is by Giannetti. 

115, 14, 15. Grim-trenchant, etc. : This diction recalls 
Taine's criticism on Carlyle's style, English Literature, Bk. 
V, Ch. IV: "All is new here — ideas, style, tone, — the 
shape of the phrases and the very vocabulary." 

115, 29. mystic unfathomable song : See 120, 27. 

116, 14, 15. chiaroscuro (L. clarus, clear, and oscurus, 
shadowy) : A successful distribution of light and shade. 

116, 19. embassy: The embassy to the pope was 
to oppose the approach of Charles of Valois to Elor- 
ence, 1301. See Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of Florence, pp. 
51, 52. 

116, 22. Beatrice : The story of their meeting (May, 
1274 or 1275) is told by Dante in Vita Nuova. See D. G. 
Eossetti's Dante and his Circle (London, 1874). 

116, 27. wedded : Beatrice married Simone de Bardi. 

116, 28. her death : See last chapters of Vita Nuova. 
Later critics have discussed the reality of Beatrice. Some 
commentators consider her an ideal, an allegory ; others 
accept the tale of her life as written by Dante, Boccaccio, 
and Villari. See J. A. Symonds, In the Key of Blue, etc. 
(1893), The Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love. 



362 LECTURES ON HEROES 

117, 2. Dante himself was wedded : About 1293 Dante 
married "Gemma." See Mrs. Olipliant's Makers of Flor- 
ence, Dante, pp. 30-32. 

117, 8. Prior: In June, 1300, Dante was one of the 
Priors or Signoria of Florence, the term of office lasting 
two months. 

117, 22, 23. Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri : For his- 
tory of these rival parties, see Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of 
Florence, Dante, pp. xvi-xviii, 6-10; also, Machiavelli's 
Florentine Histories, Vol. I. Guelfs represented the faction 
in interest of the pope. Ghibellines represented the faction 
favoring German emperors. 

118, 20 ; 119, 14 : Can della Scala : A wealthy Ghi- 
belline prince of Verona, referred to in Paradiso, Canto 
XVII. 

119, 24. Malebolge Pool : See Inf., Canto XVIII, 1-3, — 

" Luogo e in inferno, detto Malebolge, 
Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno. 
Come la cerchia che d' intorno 11 volge. 

For Diagrams of Dante's worlds see Maria Francesca Ros- 
setti's A Shadow of Dante (London, 1871). 

119, 25. alti guai : Loud or deep groans. See Inf., 
Ill, 21. 

119, 30. Divine Comedy : In a letter to Can della Scala, 
Dante thus explains the title. Comedy (the word " Divine " 
was added later) : " For if we regard the matter in the com- 
mencement it is horrible and stinking, inasmuch as it begins 
with Hell ; but, in the conclusion, it is prosperous, pleasant, 
and desirable, inasmuch as it ends with Paradise." 

120, 6. If thou follow thy star: See Inf., XV, 55, 56, 
for these words of Brunetto Latini. 

120, 12, 13. which has made me lean : . See Paradiso, 
XXV, 3, 4. 

120, 21. Hie claudor : See 120, 24, 25. 
120, 22. Florentines begged back, — 



NOTES 363 

" Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar, 
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore." 

Byron, Childe Harold, IV, 51. 

120, 26. Tieck : Ludwig Tieck, 1773-185.3 ; poet, novel- 
ist, critic, translator of Sliakspeare's dramas ; see Carlyle's 
translations for extracts from Tieck. 

120, 28, 29. Coleridge remarks : This idea, expressed in 
various forms, occurs frequently in Biographia Literaria, 
Chs. XVII and XVIII. 

122, 3, 4. canto fermo : Literally steady song ; early 
applied to church chanting. 

122, 5. terza rima: "Dante's Eime terse, restrained, 
definite, without precise limits, has no Homeric ocean-roll, 
no surges and subsidences of Miltonic cadence, but, instead, 
a forceful onward march as of serried troops, in burnished 
coats of glittering steel." J. A. Symonds, Introduction to 
Study of Dante, VII. 

123, 2, 3. perfect through suffering: See Heb. ii: 10. 

123, 31. Hall of Dite : See Inf., VIII, 70-75, — 

" Its mosques already, master, clearly 
Written there in the valley I discern 
Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire." 

Longfellow's translation. 

124, 4. Tacitus : Caius Cornelius Tacitus, historian, 55- 
117. 

124, 11. Plutus : See Inf., VII, 13-15, — 

" Quali dal vento le gonfiate vele," etc. 

124, 14. Brunetto Latini : See Inf., XV, 24-55. " Bru- 
netto Latini had been Dante's teacher. 

124, 18. Tombs : See Inf., X, 115-133. 

124, 21, 22. Farinata rises : See Inf., X, 32-39. Farinata 
degli Uberti, leader of Ghibellines. 

124, 22. Cavalcante falls : See Inf., X, 51-70. 

124, 23. fue : See Inf., X, 61-64, — 

" Colui, che attende la, per qui mi mena, 
Forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdgeno, 
Le/we parole e il modo della pena 
M'Avenam di cestui gia letto ilnome." 



364 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

" I said : ' Not by myseK my way I find ; 
And unto him who leads and makes it plain 
Thy Guido's soul perchance was ne'er inclined.' " 

Fue or fit is past tense of essere, to be. Then follows 
Cavalcante's tragic question, "How saidst thou? Wasf 
Ah, lives he then no more ? " 

125, 23. the eye seeing: See 138, 29. 

125, 24, 25. To the mean eye : Cf. Titus i : 15. 

125, 31. Dante's painting : Cf. Macaulay's Essay, 
Dante : "There is probably no writer in any language who 
has presented so many strong pictures to the mind. Yet 
there is probably no writer equally concise." 

126, 2. Francesca and her Lover: See Inf., V, 99-104. 
126, 7. della bella persona : 

" Love that on gentle breast doth swiftly seize, 
Seized this man /or the person beautiful, 
That was ta'en from me." 

Longfellow's translation. 

126, 10. alti guai: See 114, 25. 

aer bruno : Gloomy, dark atmosphere. 

126, 13, 14. Francesca's father: Guido de Polenta, lord 
of Ravenna. Francesca was married to deformed Lanciotto 
of Rimini, but became enamoured of his handsome brother, 
Paolo, and Lanciotto brought vengeance on the lovers. 

126, 30. Beatrice : See Paradiso, I, 44-50. Does Carlyle 
forget their earlier meetings in Purgatory? 

127, 6. essence of all : Cf. J. A. Symond's Introduction 
to the study of Dante, VI : "He goes straight to the essence 
of his subject, rejecting accidents, despising ornaments, and 
having seized its truth he grasps that with a grip of iron." 

127, 12. A Die spiacenti : See Inf., Ill, 59, 60. 

127, 15. Non ragionam: See Inf., Ill, 49. 

127, 17. They have not . . . hope to die : See Inf., Ill, 
44, 45. 

127, 30, 31. Byronism of taste: Cf. T. C, Vol. II, 
p. 75, Journal ; see, also, John Morley's Critical Miscel- 
lanies, p. 217 (London, 1871): "As a negative renovation, 



NOTES 365 

Carlyle's doctrine was perfect. It effectually put an end to 
the mood of Byronlsm." 

128, 7, 8. tremolar delP onde : This passage sometimes 
reads, "tremolar della marina." See Purg., II, 115, 116. 

128,17. Giovanna: See Purg., VIII, 7 1-78,— 

" Di 'a Giovanna mia, che per me chiami." 

128, 20. corbels : See Purg., X, 130-135. 

128, 26. shakes with joy : See Purg., XX, 127-129, — 

** Quand io senti', come cosa che cada, 
Tremar lo monte," etc. 

129, 27. Allegory : Cf. J. A. Symond's Introduction to 
the Study of Dante, IV : " At the risk of seeming to intro- 
duce a distinction where there is no difference, I should like 
to call the Divine Comedy an Apocalypse and not an Alle- 
gory. ... I do not deny that the Divine Comedy is full of 
allegories." 

130, 5. Gehenna : Lowest pit of Inferno. 

131, 5. found a voice : Cf. H. "W. Mabie's Essays in 
Literary Interpretation, Some Modern Eeadings from 
Dante: "He had absorbed the past and made it part of 
himself before he expressed the soul of it in poetry." 

132, 6, 8. outer . . . inmost : Cf. Euskin's distinction 
between "books of the hour" and "books of all time" 
in Sesame and Lilies, Of King's Treasuries. 

133, 4. Greece, where is it ? Cf . Byron's Childe Harold, 
Bk. II, Canto II. 

133, 22. Mahomet : See 103, 18. 

134, 13. Utility ? This is a thrust at utilitarian spirit. 
134, 13, 14. do his work : Cf . Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, 

Vol. II, Bk. VII, Ch. I, p. 125: "The safe plan is, always 
simply to do the task that lies nearest us." 

134, 16. Caliph Thrones : Mahomet and his Successors. 

134, 26. piasters: Variable silver coins. Skeat's Etym. 
Diet, suggests that the word may be a " variant " of plaster. 

135, 11, 12. Shakspeare and Dante : Cf. Lowell's Among 
my Books, Ser. II, Dante: "But we cannot help thinking 



366 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

that if Shakespeare be the most comprehensive intellect, so 
Dante is the highest spiritual nature that has expressed 
itself in rhythmical form." 

136, 1. Warwickshire Squire : See Walter Savage Lan- 
dor's Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare before 
the Worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, etc. (in Pentame- 
ron, etc., 1888). 

136, 8. Tree Igdrasil : See 27, 8. 

136, 11, 12. Sir Thomas Lucy : It is conceded that he 
formed the model for Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part II, 
and Merry Wives of Windsor. 

137, 4. Catholicism abolished : Cf. Green's Shorter 
History of the English People, Ch. VII, Sec. IV. 

137, 10. King-Henrys: From Henry IV, 1399, to 
Henry VIII, 1509. 

137, 14. St. Stephen's : St. Stephen's Hall. A part of 
House of Commons. 

137, 14, 15. hustings : Platform for Parliamentary can- 
didates. 

137, 16, 17. Freemason's Tavern : Situated in Little 
Queen Street, a popular place for public dinners, etc. 

137, 22. gift of Nature : Cf. Novalis' Schriften, II : 
"Shakespeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he 
was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, 
like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same 
spirit." 

138, 9. constructing of . . . Dramas : See De Quincey's 
tribute to Shakespeare's constructive skill in Miscellaneous 
Essays, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth. 

138, 12. Bacon's Novum Organum : Novum Organum 
Scientiarum, 1620 ; noted for its creative power. See 140, 10. 

138, 29. seeing eye : Cf . Matt, xiii : 13 ; Mark viii : 18 ; 
also, Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. IV, Varnhagen von 
Ense's Memoirs: "The eye of the intellect sees in all 
objects what it brought with it the means of seeing." 

139, 12. Let there be light : See Gen. i : 3. 

139, 24. Creative : For discussion of Shakespeare's 



NOTES 367 

creative faculty, see Hiram Corson's Introduction to tlie 
Study of Shakespeare, p. 12 (Boston, 1890). 

140, 10, 11. secondary order : Carlyle, when visited by 
Miss Bacon, said: "Lord Bacon could as easily have cre- 
ated this planet as he could have written Hamlet." Moncure 
D. Conway's Thomas Carlyle, Ch. XIV (New York, 1881). 

140, 13. Goethe alone : Cf. similar tribute in Carlyle's 
C. & M. Essays, Vol. I, Goethe. 

140, 17. His characters : See Goethe's Theatre und 
Dramatische Poesie ; Shakspeare und kein Ende. 

142, 1. superiority of Intellect : Cf. Ruskin's tribute to 
Shakespeare in Sesame and Lilies, On the Mystery of Life 
and its Arts. 

143, 2. without morality : Carlyle's ethical teaching is 
discussed in John Morley's Critical Miscellanies, pp. 222-225 
(London, 1871). 

143, 21. vulpine : L. vulpus, a fox. 

144, 9. Novalis : Criticism of Shakespeare's Dramas in 
his Schriften, II ; quoted, also, in Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. II, Novalis. 

144, 15. Nature : Cf. Edmund Sherer's Essays in Eng- 
lish Literature, Shakspere : "He is Nature herself, capri- 
cious, prodigal, always new, always full of surprises and of 
profundity." 

145, 11. Sonnets: Cf. Wordsworth's Scorn not the 
Sonnet, — 

" Scorn not the sonnet. Critic, you have frowned 
Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 
Shakspeare unlocked his heart." 

See, also. Browning's The House, X. 

145, 28. words . . . that burn : 

" Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er, 
Scatters from her pictured urn, 
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn." 

Gray, The Progress of Poesy, III, 3. 

146, 4, 5. genial laughter: Cf. Lowell's Among my 



368 LECTURES ON HEROES 

Books, Ser. I, Shakespeare Once More: "His humor and 
satire are never of the destructive kind ; what he does in that 
way is suggestive only, — not breaking bubbles with Thor's 
hammer, but puffing them away with the breath of a clown, 
or shivering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic." 

146, 10. the crackling of thorns : See Eccl. vii : 6. 
"For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the 
laughter of the fool." 

146, 13. Dogberry and Verges : City-officers in Much 
Ado about Nothing, III, 3. 

146, 18. like sunshine : Cf. Thackeray's Sketches and 
Travels in London : " A good laugh is sunshine in a house." 

146, 23, 24. Hamlet, in Wilhelm Meister : This poetic 
and keen analysis is found in Vol. I, Bk. IV, Ch. Ill ; also. 
Vol. II, Bk. V, Ch. IV, Carlyle's translation. 

146, 25. August Wilhelm Schlegel : Poet and translator, 
1767-1845. See Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and 
Literature, pp. 414-446, translated by John Black (London, 
1846). 

146, 28. Marlborough : John Churchill, Duke of Marl- 
borough, 1650-1722. See Addison's The Campaign, celebrat- 
ing Marlborough's victories in "War of Spanish Succession. 

147, 6. form one : History of Wars of the Koses, 1455- 
1485. 

147, 6. battle of Agincourt : See Henry V, IV, 4-7. 
148,12. disjecta membra: Freely translated, fragments, 

disjointed parts. 

148, 18. Tophet : See 2 Kings xxiii : 10, 11 ; Isa. xxx : 33. 
148, 19. We are such stuff : See 49, 8. 

148, 20. scroll in Westminster Abbey: Reference to 
Shakespeare's statue by Kent. In his hand is a roll with 
the passage from The Tempest, IV, i, beginning: "The 
cloud-capt Towrs," etc. 

149, 6. Sceptic : Cf . Buskin's Sesame and Lilies, Mys- 
tery of Life and its Arts. See, also, God in Shakspeare, by 
" Clelia " (London, 1890), and The Religion of Shakespeare, 
by J. M. Robertson. 



NOTES 369 

149, 22. Bringer of Light : Cf . John iii : 19 ; 1 Cor. iv : 5. 

150, 14. ^schylus : Greek dramatist, 525-456 b.c. 

151, 3, 4. Sir Thomas Lucy : See Irving's Sketch Book, 
Stratford-on-Avon. 

151, 5. Treadmill : The wheel was used for grinding corn, 
turning machinery, etc., the axis turned by tread of prisoners. 

151, 19. give-up . . . Indian Empire : Carlyle is satir- 
ical here regarding the mercenary and acquisitive spirit of 
the age. Tlie government of India was not transferred to 
the crown until 1858. 

152, 2. New Holland: Name given to Australia by 
Dutch navigator, Tasman, in 1644 ; often applied to lands 
of southern seas. 

152, 17, 18. King Shakspeare: 

*' There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb 
The crowns o' the world." 

Mrs. Browning, A Vision of Poets. 

152, 24. Paramatta : A town in New South Wales. 
152, 29. we are of one blood : 

" Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's." 

Walter Savage Landor, To Robert Browning. 

LECTURE IV 

The Heeo as Priest. Luther, Reformation ; Knox, 
Puritanism. 

154, 3. all sorts of Heroes : See 37, 12, etc. 

154, 10, 11. Priest; Prophet: These terms are often 
allied in the Bible. See Jer. vi: 13, xxiii : 11, etc. 

155, 3. open secret : Goethe's thought ; see 107, 9. 

156, 9. a seer : Cf. 1 Sam. ix: 9. 

156, 16, 17. Theories . . . Practices. See 135, 5-10. 

156, 28. Saint Dominies: Domingo de Guzman, Saint 
Dominic, founder of Dominicans, born in Spain, 1170. See 
A. T. Drane's History of St. Dominic (London, 1891). 

2b 



370 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

156, 28, 29. Thebaid Eremites : Theban hermits. " The 
Hermits of Egypt dragged out a wretched life in perfect soli- 
tude, and were scattered here and there in caves, in deserts, 
in the hollows of rocks, sheltered from the wild beasts only 
by the cover of a miserable cottage, in which each one lived 
sequestered from the rest of his species.'" Thomas D, Fos- 
broke's British Monachism (London, 1843), The Consue- 
tudinal of Anchorets and Hermits, p. 370. 

156, 31. Walter Raleigh : 1552-1618. See Creighton's 
Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, or Charles Kingsley's Sir Walter 
Raleigh and his Times. 

156, 31. Ulfila : See 27, 31. 

156, 31, 32. Cranmer : Archbishop of Canterbury, 1489- 
1556. See Hume's History of England, Vol. Ill, 393-400 ; 
also C. W. Le Bas' Life of Archbishop Cranmer. 

157, 7. Orpheus : For myth of Thracian poet, see Ovid's 
Metam., XI; Horace's Carmen, I, 7-12; Eclogues IV, 55; 
Southey's Thalaba, etc. 

157, 16. furtherances . . . obstructions: Cf. Lowell's 
The Present Crisis, — 

" New occasions teach new duties, 
Time makes ancient good uncouth." 

157, 29. Malebolges : See 119, 24. 

158, 1. Progress of the Species: Reference to current 
evolutionary ideas towards which Carlyle showed much 
prejudice. Darwin's Origin of the Species did not appear 
until 1859. See Coleridge's The Friend, Sec. II, Introd. : 
" The progress of the species neither is nor can be like that 
of a Roman road in a right line." 

158, 26. Dante's Mountain : See Inf., XXXIV, 106-118. 

158, 28. Columbus: Cf. Past and Present, Bk. Ill, 

Ch. XI,- — 

*' Columbus, my hero," etc. 

159, 23. Shakspeare's noble Feudalism : For comment 
on Shakespeare's Feudalism versus Civil Liberty, see Hume's 
History of England, Vol. IV, p. 368, note (Boston, 1849). 



NOTES 371 

160, 3, 4. destruction . . . creation : Same thoughts in 
Sartor Resartus, Bk. Ill, Ch. VII; also T. C, Vol. II, 
p. 300. 

160, 5. Odinism . . . Valour : See 54, 19. 

160, 22. Schweidnitz Fort : This incident of the Seven 
Years' War occurred Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 1761 ; see Carlyle's 
Frederick the Great, VI, 167 (Ch. VIII, Bk. XX). 

161, 14, 15. Thor's strong hammer : See 24, 13. 

162, 12, 13. worship by Symbols : Cf. Sartor Resartus, 
Bk. Ill, Ch. Ill, Symbols. 

162, 22, 23. religious forms: Cf. Sartor Resartus, 
Bk. Ill, Ch. II, Church-clothes. 

163, 6. Canopus : See 12, 19. Caabah : See 66, 7, 8. 

163, 31. Ark of the Covenant : See Num. x : 33. 

164, 24. Koreish : See 73, 29 ; 84, 25-30. 

164, 25, 26. Tetzel's Pardons of Sin : For description of 
Tetzel's methods, see Michelet's Life of Luther, pp. 20, 21, 
Hazlitt's translation (1846). 

166, 32. Hogstraten (or James Hoogenstraaten) : See 
Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 31. 

167, 1. Eck : John Mayr von Eck, 1486-1543. For his 
" Disputation with Luther," see Michelet's Life of Luther, 
pp. 59, 93. 

167, 7. Bellarmine (or Robert Bellarmin) : 1542-1621 ; 
wrote famous treatise on temporal power of the pope. 

169, 29. Sansculottism : This term is also often used 
by Goethe; see Sammt. Werke, XIII, 396 (Stuttgart, 1873). 
Carlyle's explanation is found in Fr. Rev., Bk. VI, Ch. I; 
applied in derision to extreme French Revolutionists. 

171, 7. Mohra : Also written Mohra, More, etc. 

172, 6. singing for alms : For Luther's own statements, 
see Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 5. 

172, 22, 23. Thor ; Jbtuns : See 24, 9. 

172, 25. death of Alexis: Cf. J. A. Fronde's Life of 
Luther, pp. 9-11 (New York 1884) : " The popular story of the 
young Alexius, said to have been killed at his side by light- 
ning, is, in itself, a legend, but the essence of it is true. Re- 



372 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

turning to Erfurt in the summer of 1505, he was overtaken 
by a storm. The lightning struck the ground before his 
feet; he fell from his horse. 'Holy Anne,' he cried, 'help 
me, I will become a monk.' " 

173, 13. dissuasions from his father : For his father's 
strong objections, see Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 9, with 
note from Pfizer' s Luther's Leben. 

173, 20. pious monk : " I fasted, I watched, I mortified, 
I practised all the cenobite severities, till I absolutely made 
myself ill." Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 8. 

174, 11. Latin Bible: Cf. Luther's statement, Miche- 
let's Life of Luther, Appendix, p. 357. 

174, 14. A brother monk : Probably John von Staupitz, 
vicar-general of monastery at Erfurt. 

175, 17. he found it : See Luther's Tischreden, 441 : 
"I would not for a hundred thousand florins have missed 
seeing Rome. ... I should have always felt an uneasy 
doubt whether I was not, after all, doing an injustice to 
the pope. As it is, I am quitd satisfied on the point." 

176, 29. Augustine Monk . . . Dominican : This statement 
in Hume's History of England, Vol. Ill, p. 132, is refuted 
in Michelet's Life of Luther, notes, pp. 41-43. 

177, 7. raise a little money : To finish St. Peter's, begun 
by Julius 11. 

177, 21, 22. first public challenge : For Luther's theses, 
see Michelet's Life of Luther, pp. 22-29. 

178, 1. three years : Excommunication Bull, issued 
Sept., 1520. 

178, 6. Huss : John Huss, Bohemian reformer, burned 
1415. Jerome : Hussite preacher, burned 1416. 

178, 8. Constance Council : 1414-1418. See Ecumenical 
Councils in Lawrence's Historical Studies, pp. 175-181 (New 
York, 1876). 

178, 29. and burn it: "This day, the tenth of Decem- 
ber, 1520 . . . were burnt all the pope's books, the rescripts, 
the decretals of Clement VI, the extravagants, the new bull 
of Leo X, the Somma Angelica, the Chrysopasus of Eck, and 



NOTES 373 

some other productions of Ms, and of Emser's." Michelet's 
Life of Luther, pp. 64, 65. 

179, 15. as was said above : See 164, 22. 

179, 18. Mahomet said : See 84, 25-30. 

180, 6. the greatest scene : Cf . Michelet's Life of 
Luther, pp. 82-95 ; also Fronde's Life of Luther, p. 38. 

180, 10. Charles Fifth : Successor to Maximilian, who 
had been Luther's friend. In Charles he found "a noble 
enemy." See Luther's Werke, IX, 106. 

180, 16. Huss : See 178, 6. 

180, 25. Whosoever denieth me : See Luke xii : 9. 

181, 16. I can do no other : Cf. Michelet's Life of 
Luther, p. 89 : "I cannot and will not retract, for we 
must never act contrary to our conscience. Such is my 
profession of faith, and expect none other from me, I have 
done ; God help me ! Amen ! " 

182, 4. When Hercules : Example of Carlyle's dry, sar- 
donic humor. For Labors of Hercules, see Ovid's Metam., 
IX, 102-272. 

182, 10. Reformation simply could not : Similar thought 
in John Tulloch's Leaders of the Eeformation, p. 83 (Boston, 
1860) ; also Edwin D. Mead's Martin Luther ; A Study of 
the Reformation, XII, 171 (Boston, 1881). 

183, 12. The Old was true : Cf. 54, 30. 

183, 21. logic-choppings : Cf. Romeo and Juliet, 
III, 5, - 

" How now ? how now, chop-logic ? " 

183, 20, 21. dull-droning drowsy: Good example of 
onomatopoeia. 

185, 31. Karlstadt's wild image-breaking: Reference 
to Andrew Rudolph Bodenstein (born at Karlstadt), "the 
fiery preacher" and colleague of Luther. Despite Luther's 
protests, he destroyed altars, statues, etc., until banished. 
See Michelet's Life of Luther, pp. 113, 114, 149-153. 

185, 32. Anabaptists : Revolutionary movement at 
Miinster, 1534-1536. They denounced Luther as enemy to 



374 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

their "Kingdom of the Saints." See Michelet's Life of 
Luther, pp. 230-248, Appendix, 401. 

Peasants' War : The insurrection among the peasants of 
South Germany, April, 1525, against nobles and bishops 
was led by Thomas Munzer. For Luther's protests, see 
Michelet's Life of Luther, pp. 165-180. 

186, 11. his dialect became ; " He created the German 
language." Heine. 

186, 25. Richter says : " Luther's prose is a half -battle ; 
few deeds are equal to his words." Richter's Vorschule. 

186, 32. Devils in Worms : See 180, 20-22 ; see, also, 
Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 80. 

187, 8. strange memorial : Cf. Troude's Life of Luther, 
p. 41 : "That he threw his ink-bottle at the devil is un- 
authentic," etc. See, also, Michelet's Life of Luther, 
pp. 318-336 ; David Masson's Essays (1856), The Three 
Devils, — Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's; also Luther's 
Visions in Coleridge's The Friend, First Landing-Place, 
Essays II and III. 

187, 25, 26. Duke George : Luther wrote these defiant 
words to the Elector when returning from Wartburg to 
Wittenburg, March 1, 1522. 

188, 23. poor Poet Cowper : Cf. Goethe-Carlyle Corre- 
spondence, p. 161. See, also, Leslie Stephen's Hours in a 
Library, Vol. II, Cowper and Rousseau (William Cowper, 
1731-1800). 

188, 29. Table-Talk (or Tischreden) : Translated by Haz- 
litt (London, 1848). This volume, preserved by Captain 
Henry Bell (1650), was entitled " Colloquia, Mensalia, or 
Divine Discourses at his Table, held with divers learned 
men and Pious Divines." 

189, 2, 3. deathbed of . . . Daughter : See Michelet's 
Life of Luther, pp. 298, 299. 

189, 13. Islam is all : See 75, 8. 

189, 14. Patmos : See Rev. i : 9. For Luther's letters 
from Castle of Coburg, April, 1530, to Melanchthon and 
Spalatin, see Michelet's Life of Luther, pp. 219, 220. 



NOTES 375 

190, 6. love of Music : Cf. Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. II, Luther's Psalm. 

190, 16. Kranach (or Lucas Cranacli, 1472-1553) : An 
artist friend of Luther. 

190, 21, 22. fine affections : For hints of Luther's home 
life, see Kostlin's Luther's Leben (Leipzig, 1883), The 
Schonberg-Cotta Family by Mrs. Charles, and Michelet's 
Life of Luther, pp. 196-198, 202-204, etc. 

191, 24. Voltaireism: Cf. T. C, Vol. I, p. 303. 

191, 24, 25. Gustavus-Adolphus : See Schiller's Thirty 
Years' War, for heroism of Gustavus II, 1594-1632, and 
Wallenstein. 

191, 27, 28. Presbyterianism . . . National Church, — 
in 1592. See Neal's History of the Puritans, Vol. I, p. 206 
(New York, 1843) ; also, Green's Shorter History, Ch. VIII, 
Sec. V. 

192, 16. strength, well understood: This furnishes a 
true presentation of Carlyle's much-condemned "gospel of 
force." Cf. T. C, Vol. II, p. 6. 

192, 19, 20. little Fact . . . Mayflower : Like many histo- 
rians, Carlyle has confused the Mayflower, which joined the 
party at Southampton, with the Speedwell, which left Delfs- 
haven. See W. E. Griffis' Brave Little Holland, Ch. XXVI 
(Boston, 1894), John Fiske's Beginnings of New England, 
Ch. II, and A. H. Bradford's The Pilgrim in Old England 
(New York, 1893). 

192, 22. a Poem here : See Poems of the Pilgrims, col- 
lected by T. H. Spooner (Boston, 1881), containing poems 
by Holmes, Lowell, Mrs. Hemans, and others. 

192, 32. Starchamber hangmen: Reference to unjust 
court established by Henry VII. See Neal's History of the 
Puritans, Vol. I, p. 127 ; also, Hallam's Constitutional His- 
tory, Ch. I, p. 40, Ch. VIII, pp. 258, 259 (New York, 1851). 

193,7. the Mayflower: See 192, 20. 

193, 9. In Neal's History : This description is in Vol. I, 
p. 246 (New York, 1843): "On July 1 (1620) the adven- 
turers went from Leyden to Delfshaven, whither Mr. Robin- 



376 LECTURES ON HEROES 

son and the ancients of his congregation accompanied them. 
They continued together all night, and next morning, after 
mutual embraces, Mr. Eobinson kneeled down on the sea- 
shore, and with a fervent prayer, committed them to the 
protection and blessing of Heaven." 

194, 25. a whole nation : Cf. 170, 27. 

195, 3, 4. Westminster Confession : Adopted by council, 
1643-1648. See Green's Shorter History, Ch. VIII, Sec. 8. 

195, 17. James Watt: 1736-1819. Inventor of steam- 
engine. David Hume : 1711-1776. Carlyle was a close 
student of Hume's philosophy and history. 

195, 23. A tumult : Reference to Knox's sermon at St. 
Giles' Cathedral in Darnley's presence, when he was accused 
of insulting Mary Stuart. See Knox's Historic, pp. 120, 
128, and McCrie's Life of Knox, pp. 229, 230. 

195, 27. Glorious Revolution : Revolution of 1688-1689. 
See Hallam's Constit. History, Ch. XIV, pp. 527-547 (New 
York, 1851) ; also Green's Shorter History, Ch. X, Sec. VII. 

195, 30. like Russian soldiers ; See 160, 22. 

196, 2, 3. Peasant Covenanters : Revolution of 1638. 
See Hume's History of England, Vol. V, pp. 106-110. 

196, 7. ofQ.cial pumps, etc. : Reference to extravagant 
and affected dress of the age. 

196, 8. universal three-times-three : Reference to the 
battle-cry, " A Eree Parliament and the Protestant religion." 

197, 18. St. Andrew's Castle : Eor siege of this castle 
by Regent Arran, 1547, see McCrie's Life of Knox, pp. 23, 24. 

198, 1. grievous trouble : Knox's mental sufferings are 
told in his Historie, p. 83 ; or McCrie's Life of Knox, p. 34. 

199, 10, 11. a narrow, inconsiderable man : Cf. John 
Tulloch's Leaders of the Reformation, p. 302 : "Ear inferior 
to Luther in tenderness and breadth, he is greatly superior 
to Calvin in the same qualities." 

199, 16, 17. Earl of Morton: Newly elected regent of 
St. Giles ; see McCrie's Life of Knox, p. 277. 

199, 18. Old- Hebrew Prophet : Eor elaboration of this 
thought see Carlyle' s Portraits of John Knox. 



iroTi:s 377 

199, 25. conduct to Queen Mary : Hume is severe upon 
Knox ; see History of England, Vol. IV, pp. 37-39. Kefu- 
tation found in McCrie's Life of Knox, p. 388, note eee, 
also, Tulloch's Leaders of the Reformation, pp. 288-292. 
See, also, R. L. Stevenson's Familiar Studies, John Knox's 
Relations to Women. 

200, 11. Guises : A prominent family in the French 
Catholic movement and at the court of Francis II and Mary 
in France. 

200, 20. the hapless Queen : Cf. Carlyle's plea for Mary 
in Portraits of John Knox. Recent studies of Queen Mary's 
character include Saint-Amand's Women of the Valois 
Court ; Lamartine's Mary Stuart ; Swinburne's Dramatic 
Trilogy — Bothwell, Mary Stuart, and Chastelard. 

200, 29. intolerance : " Intolerance coiled like a dragon 
round treasures which were the palladium of mankind was 
not so bad; nay, rather, was indispensable and good." 
T. C, Vol. II, p. 7, Spiritual Optics. 

202, 14. drollery : Cf . Carlyle's Portraits of John Knox ; 
also, McCrie's Life of Knox, p. 287. 

203, 5. type of character : Seems applicable to Carlyle. 

203, 14, 15. no hateful man : Another example of litotes. 

204, 7, 8. Thy Kingdom come : See Matt, vi : 10 ; Luke 
xi: 2. 

204, 14. Regent Murray : James Stuart, half-brother to 
Mary, assassinated 1569 ; see McCrie's Life of Knox, pp. 77, 
366. 

204, 25. Hildebrand: Gregory VII, 1073-1085. For 
biography, see W. R. W. Stephens' Hildebrand and his 
Times (London, 1888). 

205, 18, 19. God's Kingdom: Luke xxi: 31, adapted. 
See John Fiske's Beginnings of New England, Ch. IV, 
p. 146, The Theocratic Ideal of the Puritans; also Brad- 
ford's The Pilgrim in Old England, pp. 79-83, Ideal of 
Kingdom of God. 



378 LECTURES ON HEROES 



LECTURE V 

The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, 

Burns 

206, 16. Great Soul living apart : Carlyle's conception 
of the Man of Letters is fully explained in T[1[ 5 and 6, 
pp. 208-210. 

207, 4. copy-wrongs : Reference to Johnson, Addison, 
and their confreres in poverty. 

207, 15. Odin for a god : Same thought in Past and 
Present, Bk. I, Ch. VL 

207, 26, 27. most important modern person: Cf. T. C, 
Vol. II, p. 77, Journal: "The only sovereigns of the world 
in these days are the literary men . . . the prophets. ' ' 

208, 32. Fichte: Johann Gottlieb Eichte, 1762-1814. 
These lectures are in Fichte's Sammt. Werke (Berlin, 1845, 
1846), Vol. VI, Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten, und seine 
Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Ereiheit. See, also, Carlyle's 
C. & M. Essays, Vol. I, State of German Literature, 
pp. 68-70. 

209, 4, 5. Transcendental Philosophy : Cf . E. H. Hedge, 
Prose AYriters of Germany, p. 383 : " Among the illustrious 
four [Kant, Eichte, Snelling, and Hegel] . . . Eichte's func- 
tion is that of a moralist ; a preacher of righteousness ; . . . 
The eloquence of Transcendentalism found in him its highest 
development." 

210, 12, 13. Pillar of Fire: See Ex. xiv: 24, etc. 
210, 23, 24. a Hodman : Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. II, 

Ch. Ill ; Goethe-Carlyle Correspondence, p. 209 ; T. C, Vol. 
II, p. 80, Journal : " They are the hodmen of the intellectual 
edifice, who have got upon the wall and will insist upon 
building as if they were Masons." 

210, 31. Goethe : Cf . tribute in Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. I, Goethe ; also. Sartor Resartus, Bk. Ill, Ch. VII : 
"And knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, en- 
vironment, and dialect of his age ? I know him, and name 
him — Goethe." 



NOTES 379 

211, 22, 23. general state of knowledge : Carlyle really 
introduced English readers to modern German literature, by 
his essays and translations, yet appreciation came slowly. 

212, 4. bringers of the light : See 149, 22. 

213, 18. art of Printing : Claimed for Gutenberg of 
Mentz, 1456, and also for Coster Laurens Janszoon, about 
1426. 

214, 6. Odin's Runes: See 36, 10. 

214, 15. Agamemnon : See 43, 19 ; Pericles : 495- 
429 B.C. See G. W. Cox's Lives of Greek Statesmen, 
Ser. 11. 

214, 30, 31. Celia . . . Clifford : Types of characters in 
sentimental romance. 

215, 6. Hebrew Book: Carlyle usually refers thus to 
the Bible. 

215, 7, 8. Midianitish herds : See Ex. ii : 15. 

215, 9. Sinai : See Ex. xix: 11, etc. 

215, 23, 24, Universities arose: See 216, 8. 

215, 30. Abelard : Pierre Abelard, French scholastic 
and philosopher, 1079-1142. 

216, 8. the King : Charlemagne had already organized 
the University of Paris where Alcuin taught and Abelard 
lectured. See J. B. Mullinger's The Schools of Charles the 
Great (London, 1877). 

218, 1. Newspapers : Cf. Sartor Eesartus, Bk. Ill, 
Ch. VIII: "A Preaching Priar settles himself in every vil- 
lage and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper." 

218, 12, 13. lily of the fields : See Matt, vi : 28. * 

218, 14, 15. the handwriting . . . visible: See Dan.v: 7. 

218, 22. a live coal : See Isa. vi : 6. 

218, 24, 25. apocalypse of Nature : See 107, 9. 

219, 1. Byron : See 127, 30. 

219, 3. French sceptic : See Voltaire, 19, 10. 

219, 11, 12. worship . . . working: Cf. Past and Pres- 
ent, Bk, III, Ch. XI : " On the whole we do entirely agree with 
those old Monks, Laborare est orare. In a thousand senses, 
from one end of it to the other, true work is worship." 



380 LECTURES ON HEROES 

219, 20. Witenagemote : The old Anglo-Saxon Parlia- 
ment. See Freeman's The Norman Conquest, Vol. I, 3. 

219, 26. Burke said : Edmund Burke, 1729-1797. 

Three Estates: The Lords Spiritual, The Lords Tem- 
poral, and The Commons. 

219, 28. Fourth Estate : The Press. 

220, 30. thaumaturgic : Literally (Gr. davfia and epyov), 
wonder-working. 

221, 26. Ishmaelites : See 12, 23 ; 214, 3 ; note Car- 
lyle's frequent repetition of phrases and illustrations. 

222, 3. Organisation: This passage suggests Literary 
Guild and Authors' Clubs now existent. 

222, 29. Medicant Orders: These existed among the 
Franciscans, Jacobins, Augustinians, Carmelites. 

223, 13, 14. a Johnson is not perhaps : It is recognized 
that Johnson's best work was done during his poverty. 

224, 24. Printer Cave: Editor of Gentleman's Maga- 
zine : " A penurious paymaster." See Boswell's Johnson, 
p. 684 (Globe Edition). 

224, 24, 25. Burns dying . . . as a Ganger : Explained, 
257, 6-8. Carlyle exaggerated the injustice of compelling 
Burns to gain a livelihood as excise officer. The poet's 
letters declare that the work was not very repugnant to 
him. 

225, 9, 10. Mr. Pitt : The younger Pitt, prime minister, 
1783-1801 and 1804-1806. 

225, 11. Mr. Southey: Robert Southey, poet, 1774- 
1843*; see Carlyle's Reminiscences, Robert Southey. 

225, 28 : punctum saliens : Freely rendered, salient point. 

226, 4 : Chinese : " The true power of the government is 
in the literary class." James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great 
Religions, Ch. II, Sec. 2. See, also, W. A. P. Martin's The 
Chinese ; their Education, etc., pp. 64-97, 228-252 (New 
York, 1881). 

227, 26. millions of men : England was in dire social 
condition, 1840-1845 ; see Past and Present, Bk. Ill, The 
Modern Worker. 



not:es 381 

228, 19. Pandora's Box : Mytliological casket, with ills 
for body and mind. See Hesiod's Theog., 571, Op. 50 ; also 
D. G. Rossetti's Pandora. 

228, 32. a godless world: Same thonght in Past and 
Present, Bk. I, Ch. V : " When a nation is all unhappy," etc. 

229, 4. Skalds : See 22, 1. 
229, 5. Tree Igdrasil : See 27, 8. 

229, 11. motives : Reference to utilitarian doctrines of 
Bentham, Paley, and Mill ; see 232, 15. 

230, 11. black malady: Disease of 1348, known as 
" black death." 

230, 13, 14. Belief against Unbelief : Same thought in 
Goethe's Werke, Vol. VI, p. 159, Moses and his Exodus. 

230, 26. Bentham's theory: See 101, 23. Carlyle's 
emphasis of divineness in man and Nature was at variance 
with utilitarian doctrines. 

231, 23. blinded Samson : See Judges xvi : 21-31. 
Philistine Mill ; Reference probably to John Stuart Mill. 

232, 8. Witchcraft: Bull issued against it, 1484. See 
Hume's History of England, Vol. V, p. 409. 

232, 13. caput-mortuum : Commonly used for "dead- 
head," by Hazlitt, Carlyle, Coleridge, etc. See Fr. Rev., 
Bk. IX, Ch. VII : " So blazes out," etc. 

232, 15. Doctrine of Motives: Especially directed 
against Paley and Mill and their scientific morality. Cf. 
Sartor Resartus, Bk. Ill, Ch. Ill: "But cannot he fathom 
the Doctrine of Motives ? " 

232, 26. Phalaris'-Bull : Invention of brass made by 
Perillos, for Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, as cruel mode 
of punishment ; see Pindar's Pythian, I, 185. 

233, 3. Doubt : Cf . Tennyson's In Memoriam, XCV, 3, — 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

233, 6. (rKe\|/is : thought, inquiry, doubt. 

234, 2. We call those ages: The same thought is in 
Goethe's Moses and his Exodus ; see 230, 13, 14. 



382 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

234, 15. Cagliostro: See 59, 31. 

234, 21. Walpole : Horace Walpole, author of Historical 
Memoirs and Letters, 1717-1797. 

234, 25. mimetic life : Contrast with closing sentences 
of Macaulay's Essay on Earl of Chatham. 

235, 6. Chartisms : Carlyle's earlier views on Chartism 
had wholly changed. Contrast Chartism with Past and 
Present, and note differences in trend and beliefs. 

236, 3. a believing world : Another repetition of 170, 
25-30. 

236, 10. One Life : Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. Ill: 
"Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin, From Eternity 
onward to Eternity." 

237, 10. Mahomet's Formulas : See 84, 25-30. 

237, 18. Bookseller Osborne : Thomas Osborne, ridiculed 
in Pope's Dunciad, IT, 167. For Johnson's quarrel with 
him, see Boswell's Johnson, p. 49 (Globe Edition). 

237, 22. loadstar (lodestar) : Icelandic leidarstiarna, 
star of conduct. 

237, 30. War of the Giants : For revolt of the Giants 
against Zeus and the other gods, see Bulfinch's Age of 
Fable, pp. 149, 150 ; also Ovid's Metam., I, 151 ; Pindar's 
Pythian, VIII, 19 ; Paradise Lost, I, 119, III, 464. 

238, 1. I have already written : See Carlyle's C. & M. 
Essays, Vol. Ill, Boswell's Johnson ; Vol. I, Burns ; also 
many references to Rousseau in Fr. Rev. 

239, 11. diseased sorrow : Scrofula and hypochondria 
caused Johnson much suffering. 

239, 16. Nessus'-shirt : Famous tunic or shirt, steeped 
in blood of Nessus, the centaur, which became tenagious 
poison to the body of Ulysses ; see Ovid's Metam., IX, 
100 ; also Lucian's Tragopodagra, 304. 

239, 23. eagerly devouring : " His intellectual resembled 
his physical appetite; he gorged books." Leslie Stephen's 
Life of Samuel Johnson (English Men of Letters Ser.), 
Ch. I, p. 6. 

239, 27. fourpence : Johnson's meagre income. 



J^OTES 383 

239, 29. story of the shoes : For details see Bos well's 
Johnson, p. 20 (Globe Edition). 

240, 27. The essence of originality : Kepetition of 168, 
25, 26. 

241, 15. Church of St. Clement Danes : Johnson's pew, 
No. 18, is still shown ; see Augustus Hare's Walks in London, 
I, p. 45 (London, 1845) ; for Johnson's religious views, see 
Boswell's Johnson, pp. 17, 136, 685-686 (Globe Edition). 

241, 27. Formula: Used in literal sense. L., forma, 
formula, shape, form. 

242, 24, 25. Idols, as we said : See 163, 17-32. 
244, 4, 5. chaff sown : See Psalm i : 4 ; Luke iii : 17. 
244, 7, 8. preached a Gospel : See Johnson's Gospel in 

Augustine Birrell's Men, Women, and Books, pp. 42-45 
(New York, 1894). 

244, 20. Clear your mind of Cant : Johnson said to Bos- 
well, " My dear Sir, endeavor to clear your mind of cant." 

244, 27. Johnson's Writings : Notably Eambler, Rasselas, 
Lives of the Poets, Dictionary, etc. ; see Leslie Stephen's 
Hours in a Library, Vol. II, Dr. Johnson's Writings. 

245, 1. indisputablest : Carlyle's method of forming 
superlatives often caused lack of harmony in diction. 

245, 5. buckram style : Unique, effective term. 
245, 25. poor Bozzy: James Boswell, 1740-1795; see 
Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, Vol. Ill, Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

245, 28, 29. Scotch Laird : Cf. Macaulay's Essays, Vol. 
Ill, Samuel Johnson: "That he [Boswell] was a coxcomb 
and a bore, weak, vain, pushing, garrulous, was obvious to 
all who were acquainted with him." 

246, 5. witty Frenchman : Ascribed by Bartlett's Famil- 
iar Quotations to Marshal Catinat, 1637-1712. Coleridge 
and others trace the aphorism to the Prince of Cond^ ; see 
The Friend, Essay II, Third Landing-Place. " No one is a 
hero to his valet" is often attributed to Mme. de Sevign6; 
also to Mme. Cornuel. 

246, 14. a poor forked radish : Cf . Henry IV, III, 2 : 
' ' When he was naked, he was for all the world like a 



384 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

forked radish with a head fantastically carved upon it with 
a knife." (Part II.) 

246, 24, 25. difficult confused existence : See Augustine 
Birrell's comparison of Johnson and Carlyle, Obiter Dicta, 
Ser. II, pp. 113, 114. 

247, 3, 4. Spirit of Lies : Same thought in Novalis' 
Schriften, I. 

247, 5. ultimus Romanorum: Carlyle used same ex- 
pression regarding his father. See Reminiscences, James 
Carlyle. 

247, 8. not ... a strong man : Cf. Lowell's Among 
my Books, Ser. II, Rousseau and the Sentimentalists : " Intel- 
lectually, he was true and fearless ; constitutionally, timid, 
contradictory and weak; but never, if we understand him 
rightly, false." 

247, 10. the talent of Silence: The same expression 
found in T. C, Vol. II, p. 138, Letter to Mrs. Carlyle, Aug. 
15, 1831. 

247, 13, 14. consume his own smoke : See Psalm xxxvii : 
20. 

247, 21. convulsion-fits : Rousseau was a hypochon- 
driac. See Sainte-Beuve's Literary Portraits, Vol. I. 

247, 26, hold his peace : See Ex. xiv : 14 ; Job xiii : 13. 

248, 13, 14. delirations: Cent. Diet, says this word is 
"archaic." 

248, 25. Genlis : Stephanie, Countess Genlis, 1746-1830. 
See Fr. Rev., Bk. VII, Ch. Ill ; also John Morley's Rousseau, 
Vol. II, p. 323 (London, 1873) ; also Austin Dobson's Four 
Frenchwomen, pp. 107-207. 

249, 27. appeals to Mothers: Rousseau's treatises on 
Moral Education ; see Emile, II, 1, 2, 60. 

249, 27, 28. Contrat-social : See John Morley's Rousseau, 
Vol. I, p. 134 (London, 1873) ; also Carlyle's Fr. Rev., 
Vol. I, Bk. I, Ch. VII : ' ' And now has not Jean Jacques 
promulgated his new evangel of a Contrat-Social ; explain- 
ing the whole mystery of Government, and how it is con- 
tracted and bargained for — to universal satisfaction ? " 



jsroTus 385 

See, also, analysis in Coleridge's The Friend, Sec. I, 
Essay IV. 

249, 29. life in Nature: Cf. Lowell's Among my Books, 
Ser. 'I, Rousseau and the Sentimentalists: "The strongest 
mark which Rousseau has left upon literature is a sensibility 
to the picturesque in Nature," etc. 

249, 31. a Prophet to his Time: Cf. John Morley's 
Critical Miscellanies, Rousseau : ' ' The Rousseau of these 
times for English-speaking nations is Thomas Carlyle. With 
each of them thought is an aspiration, and justice a senti- 
ment and society a retrogression." 

250, 13. stealings of ribbons: When a young man, 
Rousseau lived with Mme. de Vercellis ; at her death a piece 
of old rose-colored ribbon was missing; Rousseau denied 
the theft, but was convicted. See Rousseau's Confessions, 
Vol. II ; also John Morley's Rousseau, Vol. I, pp. 39, 40. 

250, 24. His Books : Confessions, Discourses, Emile, 
etc. Rousseau's ideas on education are much studied by 
modern professors of child-study. See examination of his 
works in Guizot's History of France, Vol. V, Ch. LV, 
p. 228 (New York, 1884). 

250, 32. Madame de Stael ; Baroness Holstein, daughter 
of Necker, 1766-1817, author of L'Allemagne, Corinne, 
Delphine, etc. See Sainte-Beuve's Portraits des Femmes 
(1876). 

250, 32; 251, 1. St. Pierre: J. H. Bernardine de St. 
Pierre, 1737-1814, author of Paul and Virginia, etc. See 
Sainte-Beuve's Literary Portraits, Vol. II. 

251, 2. Literature of Desperation : This phrase suggests 
modern Decadent School. 

251, 3, rosepink: Cf. George Meredith's Diana of the 
Crossways : "Philosophy is foe to rosepink and dirty drab 
and their silly cancelling effects," etc. 

251,4. Goethe: Cf. Sartor Resartus, Bk. II, Ch. IX: 
" Close thy Byron ; open thy Goethe." 

251, 5. Walter Scott : See Carlyle's C. & M. Essays, 
Vol. IV, Sir Walter Scott. 

2c 



386 LECTURES ON HEROES 

251, 17, 18. from post to pillar : Term of manege, 
Rousseau sojourned in France, Switzerland, and England. 

251,26,27. French Revolution . . . Evangelist: Same 
thought in Carlyle's Fr. Rev., Bk. VII, Ch. I. 

252, 25. mimes : Gr. /x,t/*a>, an ape, a masker. 

253, 7. those children : Robert, born Jan. 25, 1756, was 
eldest of six children ; Burns' father portrayed in The Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night. 

253, 13. Schoolmaster: John Murdoch, student of di- 
vinity and teacher of boys at Lochlea. 

253, 25. voting pieces of plate: This is sarcasm upon 
the patronage of Carlyle's time. - 

253, 31, 32. rustic special dialect- The thought ampli- 
fied in Carlyle's Critical Essay on the Genius and Writings 
of Burns, p. 12. 

254, 16. Harz-rock : Reference to mountains in north- 
ern Germany ; last stronghold of Paganism ; famous in 
history and folk-lore. See also, Goethe's Faust, Walpur- 
gisnacht. 

254, 23. Norse Thor See 24, 9. 

254, 29, 30. cutting peats : As a lad Burns worked on 
his father's farm. 

254, 32. old Marquis Mirabeau : Victor Riquetti, Mar- 
quis de Mirabeau, 1715-1789, father of Mirabeau, the revo- 
lutionist. 

255, 8. dewdrops from his mane : See Troilus and 
Cressida, III, 3, — 

" And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
Be shook to air." 

^ 255, 9. laughs at the shaking of the spear : See 65, 31. 

255,15. the most gifted : He means versatile ; seel. 23. 

255, 19. Professor Stewart: Dugald Stewart, philoso- 
pher, 1753-1828 ; friend and critic of Burns. 

255, 31. led them off their feet: Cf. Allan Cunning- 
ham's Life and Lands of Burns, p. 81 (New York, 1841) : 
" The accomplished and beautiful Duchess of Gordon de- 



NOTES 387 

Glared, in a latter day, that no man ever carried her so com- 
pletely off her feet as Robert Burns." 

255, 32 ; 256, 1. Mr. Lockhart : John Gibson Lockhart, 
1794-1854, Life of Burns. 

256, 18. manfulness : Cf. Andrew Lang's Letters to 
Dead Authors, p. 204, To Robert Burns: "No poet, since 
the Psalmist of Israel, ever gave the world more assurance 
of a man, none lived a life more strenuous, engaged in an 
eternal conflict of the passions, and by them overcome — 
mighty and mightily fallen." 

256, 22. Mirabeau . See 106, 2, 3. 

257, 9. capture of smuggling schooners: Burns was 
excise officer, 1789. 

257, 12. Ushers de Breze : Reference to Mirabeau's 
angry response to Marquis de Br6z6, Supreme Usher to the 
King. See Carlyle's Tr. Rev., Vol. I, Bk. I, Chs. Ill, IV; 
also Bk. V, Ch. II. 

258, 32. copy music : Rousseau taught and wrote music 
at Lusanne and in Paris garrets. 

259, 18. Light ; or, failing, etc. : Forceful epigram. 

259, 30. his visit to Edinburgh: See Allan Cunning- 
ham's Life, pp. 104-133 ; also Lockhart's Life, pp. 103-144. 

260, 7. Regiment La Fere. See 322, 14. 

260, 9, 10. escape disgrace and a jail: Carlyle exagger- 
ates for pictorial effect. Cf. Allan Cunningham's Life of 
Burns, p. 101 (New York, 1841). 

260, 14, 16. Adversity . . . prosperity: This antithesis 
is often quoted. 

260, 19, 20. so little forgot himself : Burns' indifference 
to patronage emphasized in Lockhart's Life, pp. 129, 130. 

261, 2, 3. impossible for him to live : Cf. Carlyle's 
Critical Essay on the Genius and Writings of Burns : " Still 
we do not think the blame of Burns' failure lies chiefly with 
the world," etc. 

261,15. Island of Sumatra : Westerly of Sunda Islands, 

Malay Archipelago. See Carlyle's translations from Richter. 

261, 20. Great honour to the Fire-flies! But! An 



388 LECTURES ON HEBOES 

abrupt, elliptical ending full of graphic force. Carlyle shows 
great skill in his chosen imagery for illustration. 

LECTURE VI 

The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon : Modern 
Revolutionism 

262, 10. to command over us : "Mr. Carlyle' s idea of 
the hero is a simple one. That characteristic is power." 
J. B. Mozley's Essays, p. 230 (New York, 1878). 

262, 14. King . . . Canning : See 16, 3. 

263, 7, 8. worship (worthship) : A.-S. weorthscipe, 
state of worth. Eor expansion of same thought see Past 
and Present, Bk. I, Ch. VI. 

263, 12. Hustings-speeches : See 137, 14. 

263, 30, 31. Ideals can never be : Same thought in Past 
and Present, Bk. II, Ch. IV. 

264, 3. Schiller says: Schiller's mandate is "Let no 
man measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of 
reality." 

265, 7. Sansculottism : See 169, 29. Cf . Lectures on 
the History of Literature, Lecture XI, p. 204: "Thus the 
Erench Revolution was only a great outburst of the truth, 
that this world was not a mere chimera, but a great reality." 

265, 11. Divine right : Cf. T. C, Vol. II, Journal, Eeb. 
7, 1831 : "Kings do reign by divine right or not at all." 

266, 4. There is a God : Carlyle often thus exclaims. 
Cf. T. C, Vol. II, p. 11 ; also. Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. 
VIII ; also, T. C, Vol. II, p. 78, Note-book : " God is above 
us, else the future of the world were well-nigh desperate." 

266, 9. obedience : Cf. Emerson's Lectures, Perpetual 
Eorces : " Obedience alone gives the right to command." 

267, 5, 6. having your Able-man to seek : See Past and 
Present, Bk. I, Ch. VI. 

267, 19. metallic coined money: See 164, 25, 26. 

268, 4, 5. Camille Desmoulins : Benoit Camille Desmou- 
lins, guillotined, 1794. Cf . Carlyle's Er. Rev., Bk. V, Ch. IV : 



NOTES 389 

"But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Toy, rush- 
ing out, sibylline in face ; his hair streaming, in each hand 
a pistol. ' ' 

268, 17. reigns of terror : In France, 1793, 1794. See 
Carlyle's Fr. Rev., Bk. VII, Ch. I. 

268, 23, 24. gone mad: For English sentiment, see 
Green's Shorter History, Ch. X, Sec. III. 

268, 26. Bedlam : This word is a contraction for Beth- 
lehem, a religious house, St. Mary of Bethlehem, changed 
into an asylum, 1547. 

268, 30. Three Days of July : July 27-29, 1830, when 
Charles X, last of the Bourbons, was dethroned and Louis 
Philippe declared king. 

269, 9. Niebuhr: Barthold Georg Mebuhr, historian, 
1776-1831. See reference to him in Goethe-Carlyle Corre- 
spondence, p. 162. 

269, 13. Racine : Jean Racine, dramatist, 1639-1699, 
court favorite. , See Sainte-Beuve's Literary Portraits, Vol. 
III. 

269, 25. Truly, without the French Revolution : The 
same words found in T. C, Vol. II, p. 15. 

270, 6. Trump of Doom : See I Cor. xv : 52. 

270, 20. Sansculottic : This word in varied forms be- 
came a favorite synonym with Carlyle for revolutionary. 

271, 10. Liberty and Equality: Cf. Carlyle's Fr. Rev., 
Vol. II, Bk. I, Ch. IX. Carlyle's ideal government was not 
democracy, but an "Aristocracy of Talent," or "Govern- 
ment of Heroes." 

271, 31. Bending before men : Quotation from Novalis, 
Schriften, II. 

272, 8. Loyalty, religious Worship : Cf. same state- 
ment in Goethe-Carlyle Correspondence, p. 233. 

273, 4, 5. necessary finish : Elaboration of thought in 
Fr. Rev., Vol. II, Bk. IX, Ch. VIL 

273, 16. as Kings : It is noteworthy that the title King 
was applied to neither Cromwell nor Napoleon. 
273, 22, 23. wars ... of Roses : See 147, 6. 



390 LECTUBES ON HEROES 

273, 23, 24. Simon de Montfort: Earl of Leicester, 
leader of barons against Henry III, was killed 1265. 

273, 25. war of the Puritans : Civil AVar, 1642-1649. 

274, 6. Laud: William Laud, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 1573-1645, "recognized as the centre of the varied 
opposition to Puritanism." Green's Shorter History, Ch. 
YIII, Sec. III. 

274, 8, 9. unfortunate Pedant: Cf. J. B. Mozley's 
Essays, Historical and Theological, p. 107 (New York, 1878) : 
" The stickler for obsolete forms, the obstinate old zealot 
about trifles, becomes the one popular figure of Laud." 

274, 28. his doom: When the ministry fell, Dec, 1640, 
Laud was imprisoned and was executed, 1645. 

274, 31. clothes itself in forms. Cf, Sartor Eesartus, 
Bk. Ill, Ch. II, Church-clothes. 

275, 29. upholsterer-mummery: One of Carlyle's com- 
pounds of unique coinage. 

276, 9, 10. multiplied ceremonial bowings : See Hume's 
History of England, 'Vol. II, p. 68. 

276, 27. suit-of-clothes : Cf. Hume's Essays, XIY, 
The Epicurean: "Art may make a suit of clothes, but 
Nature must produce a man." 

277, 10. Charles Second: "To Charles the Second the 
degradation of England was only a move in the political 
game which he was playing," etc. Green's Shorter His- 
tory, Ch. IX, Sec. HI. 

277, 11. Rochesters : John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 
a courtier poet during early days of Restoration. See 
Guizot's History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration 
of Charles II. 

277, 16. Puritanism . . . gibbets : The reaction against 
Puritanism is pictured in Butler's Hudibras. 

277, 21. Habeas-Corpus : One result of later Revolution, 
1688, 1689. 

278, 3. Eliot, Hampden, etc. : See John Eorster's States- 
men of the Commonwealth (New York, 1846); also Peter 
Bayne's Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution (London, 



NOTES 391 

1878), Pym, pp. 135, 221-223 ; Yane, pp. 347-387. See, 
also, Macaulay's Essays, Vol. II, John Hampden. 

278, 5. Conscript Fathers : Senators of Ancient Kome. 

278, 17. Tartufe (or Tartuffe) : Reference to the hypo- 
crite in Moli^re's comedy, Tartuffe. 

278, 22. Washington : See 306, 11, 12. 

278, 27. As we said . . . Valet : See 246, 5. 

279, 22. Ship-moneys : Reference to contest "begun in 
1634 by king's demand for fleet-money. Hampden declared 
it " an illegal impost," and he was imprisoned and set free 
by Long Parliament, 1641. 

279, 22. Monarchies of Men : The Monarchy of Men 
was written by Sir John Eliot, during his last imprisonment. 
It is added to John Forster's Statesmen of the Common- 
wealth, pp. 43-54 (New York, 1846). 

280, 6. Baresark : The old form is Berserker, shirt of 
mail. In mythology, Berserker was grandson of eight- 
handed Starkader and beautiful Alfhilde. The term is used 
of fearless, rough, unprotected warriors. 

280, 7. Monarchy of Man : See 279, 22. 

280, 26, 27. incredible Creeds : See Hallam's Constit. 
History, Ch. VII, pp. 227-229. 

283, 17, 18. Pococke . . . Grotius : See 58, 27. 

283, 20, 21. not portraits : Earlier biographies of Crom- 
well are criticised in Carlyle's C.'s L. & S., Vol. I, p. 16. 
Among recent contrasting biographies, see S. H. Church's 
Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1894), and R. E. D. Palgrave's, 
Oliver Cromwell (London, 1890). 

283, 30. white Spectre : Reference to tradition of gigan- 
tic woman who appeared to Cromwell. See Mark Noble's 
Cromwell (London, 1787), Vol. I, 95. 

284, 3. Worcester Fight : The story is told in Heath's 
Elagellum and other old chronicles. 

284, 6. Huntingdon Physician: Dr. Simcott. See 
Church's Oliver Cromwell, p. 13. 

Sir Philip Warwick : This Royalist in his memoirs tells 
many facts and rumors about Cromwell. 



392 LECTURES ON HEROES 

284, 16, 17. some of the dissipations of youth: Cf. 

Warwick's Memoirs, p. 276 (1638). 

284, 18, 19. he is married : Aug., 1620, to Elizabeth Bou- 
chier of Felsted in Essex. Cromwell's letters reveal his devo- 
tion to his wife. See, also, Southey's Life of Cromwell, p. 26. 

284, 29. St. Ives and Ely: Towns near Huntingdon. 
See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, Letter I. 

285, 11. great Taskmaster's eye : Cf. thought in T. C, 
Vol. II, Note-book, March 31, 1833. 

285, 15. Bedford Fens : See Warwick's Memoirs (1638), 
p. 250; also, Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, Letter II. 
Reference is to the long contest to secure drainage of Suffolk 
and Essex Fens. 

286, 1, 2. envelopments at Dunbar : Sept. 3, 1650. See 
Carlyle's C.'s L. and S.,.Part VI, Letters XCI and XCV. 
When Cromwell's troops seemed hemmed in, he repeated 
with them the 117th Psalm. 

286, 4. Worcester Fight : Sept. 3, 1651. See 284, 3. 
See Hume's History of England, Vol. V, p. 417. 

286, 6. Cavaliers : Partisans of king. 

286, 7. love-locks: The affected curls worn on the 
temples. 

286, 11. participation in the King's death : This was 
"the least creditable portion of his history." Church's 
Oliver Cromwell, p. 304. Carlyle makes little reference to 
it or attempt at defence. See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. 
I, pp. 400-403. See J. B. Mozley's Essays, Vol. I, p. 273 ; 
Carlyle's Cromwell. 

286, 25. Hampton-Court negotiations : Such were 
carried on with the king at his residence, but they only 
revealed his duplicity. See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, 
pp. 227, 234. 

287, 24. city-tapsters : Cf. Southey's Life of Cromwell, 
p. 59: "'Your troops,' said I, 'are most of them old 
decayed serving-men and tapsters and such kinds of fel- 
lows ; and,' said I, ' their troops are gentlemen's sons,' " etc. 

287, 27, 28. Cromwell's Ironsides : This name was given 



N0TM8 398 

at Marston Moor, July 2, 1644. Cf. Carlyle's Frederick the 
Great, Vol. V, p. 208. 

288, 2. I would kill the King : This statement, made 
by Noble, Vol. I, p. 271, is denied by Gardiner, Great Civil 
War, Vol. Ill, p. 196 : "There is no foundation for ascrib- 
ing it to Cromwell," etc. 

288, 19. Huntingdon Farmer : Cromwell lived quietly 
at Huntingdon until 1625. 

288, 29. vulpine intellect : See 143, 21. 

289, 6, 7. pie-powder court : The pied-powder or "Way- 
farers' court was held at fairs to settle disputes, etc. 

289, 13. paltry plated coin : Glib speech. See 289, 5. 

290, 11, 12. Father of quacks : See 59, 31. 

290, 16. Sham-Hero : Same expressions in Past and 
Present, Bk. Ill, Ch. XIII. 

290, 28. Euphemisms : (Gr. eixp^iiiia) . Literally well- 
spoken words, delicate expressions. 

290, 29. Falklands : Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, 
orator, statesman, soldier, 1610-1643. See Carlyle's C.'s L. 
and S. , Vol. I, p. 144. Falkland was noted for refined tastes, 

Chillingworths : William Chillingworth, eloquent English 
preacher, 1602-1644. Carlyle often used plurals thus. 

290, 30. Clarendon : Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 
1608-1674. See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, pp. 77, 109. 

292, 5. Faculty to do : Cf. Goethe's couplet, — 

" Life's no resting but a moving, 
Let thy life be Deed on Deed." 

Wilhelm Meister's Travels, Ch. XV. 

292, 28. Cause that was His : The battle-cry was " God 
and our Cause." 

293, 3. Pillar of Fire : See 210, 12, 13. 

293, 9. be such prayer : Cf . T. C, Vol. II, pp. 17, 18, 
Letter: "Prayer is the aspiration of our poor struggling 
heavy-laden soul towards its Eternal Father ; and, with or 
without words, ought not to become impossible, nor, I per- 
suade myself , need it ever," 



394 LECTURES ON HEROES 

293, 20. Speeches : See 314, 7. 

294, 18, 19. wearing his heart upon his sleeve: See 

Othello, I, i, — 

" The native act and figure of my heart 
In complement extern, 'tis not long after — 
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve 
For daws to peck at ; I am not what I am." 

294, 21. house built of glass : Old proverb, — 

" Qui a sa maison de verre 
Sur le voisin ne jette pierre." 

Proverbes en Rimes (1664) . 

Carlyle here refers to the transparent quality of glass rather 
than to its fragility. 

295, 23. Fontenelle : Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, 
1657-1757, "Dialogues des Morts," etc., " Entretiens sur 
la Plurality des mondes," etc. 

296, 16, 17. The vulgar Historian: Vulgar is used in 
literal sense, belonging to the multitude, common. 

296, 24. 'YiroKpiTTfs : Literally play-actor, dissembler. 

297, 15, 16. enact a brother man's biography: Cf. 
Emerson's Essay on History: "All history becomes sub- 
jective. In other words, there is properly no history, only 
biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for 
itself, — must go over the whole ground." 

298, 28. Whitehall : Palace of kings from Henry VIII 
to William III. 

299, A. windbag : This is a favorite word with Car- 
lyle to designate a frivolous talker. See Past and Present, 
Bk. Ill," Ch. XIV, Sir Jabesh Windbag. 

299, 18. Corsica Boswell : The reference is to Boswell's 
travels and book on Corsica, a tribute to Paoli. " Johnson 
in vain expressed a wish that he would empty his head of 
Corsica, which had filled it too long." Leslie Stephen's 
Samuel Johnson, Ch. IV (English Men of Letters Ser.). 

299, 27. Empire of Silence : Carlyle's reiterated gospel 
(not always practised by him) . 

300, 12, 13. Solomon says : See Eccles. iii: 7 : "A time 



NOTES 395 

to rend, and a time to sew ; a time to keep silence, and a 
time to speak." 

300, 25. Cato : Cato, censor, about 234-149 b.c. 

300, 30, 31, two kinds of ambition : Cf. Cowper's 
Table-Talk, 591, — 

" Low ambition and the thirst of praise ; " 

and Young's Love of Fame, Satire VII, 175, — 

" The true ambition there alone resides, 
Where justice vindicates and wisdom guides ; 
Where public blessings, public praise attend, 
Where glory is our motive, not our end." 

301, 3, 4. Seekest thou great things : See Jer. xlv : 5. 
301, 15. Coleridge beautifully remarks : Cf. the poetic 

passage in The Friend, Sec. II, Introduction : ' ' We have 
been discoursing (by implication at least) of infancy, child- 
hood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying upon the 
unfolding intellect plenteously as morning dew-drops, — of 
knowledge inhaled insensibly like the fragrance, — of disposi- 
tions stealing into the spirit like music from unknown quar- 
ters, — of images uncalled for and rising up like exhala- 
tions, — of hopes plucked like beautiful wild flowers from 
the ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to 
make a garland for a living forehead ; — in a word we have 
been treating of nature as a teacher of truth through joy and 
through gladness, and as a creatress of the faculties by a 
process of smoothness and delight." 1 

301, 23. Mirabeau's ambition : See discussioui of this 
thought in Carlyle's Fr. Kev., Vol. I, Bk. IV, Ch. IV, and 
Bk. X, Ch. VII. 

301, 28. a poor Necker: Jacques Necker, Minister of 
Finance under Louis XVI; see Carlyle's Fr. Kev., Vol. I, 
Bk. I, Ch. V. 

301, 31. Gibbon : Edward Gibbon, historian, 1737-1794 ; 
see Carlyle's Fr. Rev., Vol. I, Bk. I, Ch. V : " How singular 
for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved ; whose 
father, keeping most probably his own gig, 'would not 



396 LECTUBI^S ON HEiiOi:^ 

hear of such a union,' to find now his forsaken Demoiselle 
Curchod sitting in the high places of the world, as Minister's 
Madame, and Necker not jealous ! " 

302, 9. Thy kingdom come : See Matt, vi : 10, etc. 

302, 23. their ears crept off : Account given in Carlyle's 
C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, p. 92, note to Letter II. 

302, 32. once more a Parliament : Short Parliament, 
April, 1640, was followed by the Long Parliament, Nov., 
1640 ; see Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, pp. 102, 103. 

303, 18. devout imagination : See 204, 13, 14. 

304, 19, 20 : Christian land : Theocracy. See 303, 14. 
304, 23, 24. Chancery Law-Courts : The long and futile 

cases caricatured in Dickens' Bleak House. 

304, 29. Hume : For Hume's treatment of Cromwell, 
see History of England, Vol. V, pp. 289, 336-347, 486-488 
(Boston, 1850). See, also, Carlyle's comments on Hume, 
Lectures on The History of Literature, Lecture X, 182-184 
(New York, 1892). 

305, 12, 13. Antaeus-like : The gigantic mythical wrestler, 
invincible if he touched the earth, as portrayed in Apollodo- 
rus, II, 5. 

305, 20. rugged Orson : The twin brother of Valentine, 
who was carried off and suckled by a bear ; later was known 
as "Wild Man of the Forest," and "Terror of France." 

306, 11. Diocletian: Diocletianus Valerius, 245-313, 
Roman Emperor who, after twenty-one years of office and 
conquest, abdicated, and returned to his farm in Dalmatia, 
where he devoted himself to philosophy. 

306, 11, 12. George Washington : Carlyle seems unfair 
to Washington ; he could never sympathize with American 
democracy. Cf . T. C, Vol. II, p. 300, Journal : " Washington 
is another of our perfect characters ; to me a most limited, 
uninteresting sort." 

306, 26. diplomatic Argyles : Marquis of Argyle ; be- 
headed 1685 ; Presbyterian leader. See Carlyle's C.'s L. 
and S., Vol. I, pp. 296, 493; also, Green's Shorter History, 
Ch. VIII, Sec. 8. 



NOTES 897 

306, 30. Montrose : James Graham, Marquis of Mont- 
rose ; Koyalist leader ; executed 1650. See Peter Bayne's 
Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution, pp. 257-297 (Lon- 
don, 1878). 

307, 6, 7. dashes headlong at the drilled armies : Mon- 
trose, a daring soldier, defeated the Puritans at Tippemuir, 
Perth, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, etc. 

307, 19. lies the rub : This idiom is derived from the 
game of "bowls" ; hindrance, impediment. 

307, 22. Rump Parliament : See Pride's Purges, 212, 
21. Cf . Butler's Hudibras, III, 2, — 

"The few 
Because they're wasted to the stumps 
Are represented best by rumps." 

See Hume's History of England, Vol. Y, p. 434. 

307, 22, 23. assumption of the Protectorship : Though 
Cromwell assumed dictatorship when he dismissed Parlia- 
ment, the title of Protector was not conferred until Dec. 16, 
1653, at close of convention. See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., 
Vol. II, p. 350 ; also, Hallam's Constit. History, Ch. X, pp. 
382, 383 (New York, 1851). 

308, 4. Long Parliament : 1640-1648. 

308, 27, 28. You Sixty men : For Cromwell's words of 
dismissal, see Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol, II, pp. 27-29, 
Letter CXXVI. The " Rump" is usually regarded as com- 
posed of fifty-one members. See Pari. H., Ill, 1286 ; Church's 
Oliver Cromwell, p. 301. 

308, 31, 32. Free Parliament, etc. : 1649. See Green's 
Shorter History, Ch. VIII, Sec. IX. 

309, 5, 6. Pride's Purges : On Dec. 6, 1648, Colonel Pride 
entered Parliament with two regiments, arrested forty-six 
members of the Long Parliament, denied entrance to ninety- 
six more, leaving seventy-eight, of whom twenty-eight op- 
posed Cromwell, and absented themselves. See Pari. H., 
HI, 1286 ; also, Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, p. 327. 

309, 8. fifty or three-score : Cf . 308, 27, 28. 



398 LECTURES ON HEROES 

309, 13. diligent Godwin : Sir William Godwin, author 
of History of the Commonwealth, 4 vols. (London, 1824). 

309, 30, 31. a kind of Reform Bill: For details of bill, 
see Church's Oliver Cromwell, p. 383. 

310, 18. ordered them to begone : See 307, 21. 

310, 20. John Milton : 1649, Latin Secretary for Crom- 
well and Commonwealth ; see Panegyric and Sonnet on 
Cromwell, " Our Chief of Men." 

310, 32 ; 311, 1. Barebones's Parliament : Little Parlia- 
ment or Barebone's Parliament, named after "Praise God" 
Barebone, or Barbone, a leather merchant. See Carlyle's 
C.'s L. and S., Vol. II, p. 33. 

311, 18. reform the Court of Chancery : See 304, 23, 
24 ; see Church's Oliver Cromwell, p. 392. 

311, 18, 19. They dissolved themselves : Dec. 12, 1653. 

312, 19. second Parliament : This was called on Crom- 
well's "lucky day," Sept. 3, 1654, but met Monday, Sept. 4 ; 
known as Pedant Parliament. 

312, 25: concluding Speech: See Carlyle's C.'s L. and 
S., Vol. II, pp. 390-394, Speech XVII. 

314, 2. God be judge: " And I do dissolve this Parlia- 
ment ! and let God be judge between you and me ! " Carlyle's 
C.'s L. and S., Vol. II, p. 393. 

314, 8. printed Speeches : These were collected and 
edited by Carlyle, 1845. For Carlyle's estimate of Crom- 
well, see J. B. Mozley's Essays, Historical and Theological, 
Vol. I. ; also, Margaret Fuller's review in Life Without and 
Life Withm (Boston, 1857), pp. 179-191. 

314, 21. Histories and Biographies : See Carlyle's C.'s 
L. and S., Vol. I, Ch. II, The Biographers of Oliver. 

314, 27. Lord Clarendon: See 290, 29; also, Peter 
Bayne's Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution, pp. 435-502. 

315, 14. the way of Despotism : For discussion of 
Cromwell's refusal of the crown, see Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., 
Vol. II, pp. 273, 274 ; also, Church's Oliver Cromwell, 
p. 466, Dallying with the Crown. 

315, 29. Pombal : Portuguese minister, 1750-1777. 



NOTES 399 

315, 30. Choiseul : Minister of Louis XV, 1758-1770. 

316, 8. Old Colonel Hutchinson : Governor of Notting- 
ham, one of the regicides. See Carlyle's C.'s L. and S., 
Vol. I, p. 315. 

316, 20. his poor Mother : This paragraph suggests 
Carlyle's tender devotion to his own mother. Cf. T. C, 
Vol. I, 38, 188, Vol. II, 97, 343. 

316, 30. dead body was hung: At Kestoration, Crom- 
well's body was hung at Tyburn. 

317, 11, 12. this ... got itself hushed-up: Carlyle's 
style became lax and hurried in these last pages. His 
treatment of Napoleon was wholly inadequate, and one re- 
grets that he added this supplement to the forceful, if ex- 
treme, defense of Cromwell. 

317, 13. in i688 : Revolution against James II. Cf. 
Green's Shorter History, Ch. VIII, Sec. X ; "In the Revo- 
lution of 1688, Puritanism did the work of civil liberty which 
it had failed to do in that of 1642." 

317, 16. French Revolution: Cf. Carlyle's Fr. Rev., 
Vol. I, Bk. VI, Ch. I : " For ourselves, we answer that 
French Revolution means here the open violent rebellion 
and victory of disimproved anarchy against corrupt worn- 
out authority." 

317, 23. In Church and State : Cf. Carlyle's C.'s L. and 
S. , Vol. I, Ch. V, Introduction. 

318, 12. Awful Unnamable : This phrase suggests Car- 
lyle's earlier mystic expressions for God, — Verities, Eterni- 
ties, Abysses, etc. 

318, 21. Sceptical Encyclopedies : For Society of En- 
cyclopedists and their publications see Morley's Rousseau, 
Vol. I, p. 227, Vol. II, p. 255. 

318, 25, 26. dumb Prophet : See 290, 25 ; also, Car- 
lyle's C.'s L. and S., Vol. I, Introduction : "Cromwell, em- 
blem of the dumb English," etc. 

318, 27. Hume's notion : See 304, 29. 

319, 8, 9. no . . . liberty to tell lies : See Carlyle's 
attack on falsehood, Sartor Resartus, Bk. I, Ch. II. 



400 LECTURES ON HEROES 

319, 29. His savans : Notably Denon, Eourrier, Dupuis ; 
one hundred artists and scholars, Savans, were chosen to go 
on the expedition to Egypt, 1798, to gain scientific know- 
ledge and antiquarian treasures. See Hazlitt's Life of 
Napoleon, Vol. II, pp. 97-114 (London, 1852). 

319, 30. Bourrienne : 1769-1834. An early school-fel- 
low, later secretary to Napoleon. His Memoirs are valuable 
to Napoleonic historians. 

320, 18. Saint Helena : Napoleon exiled Aug. 8, 1815 ; 
died there May 6, 1821. See Scott's Life of Napoleon, 
Vol. Ill, Chs. XXX-XXXIV ; also J. S. C. Abbott's Napo- 
leon at St. Helena. 

321, 3. La carridre : Commonly rendered, a career opens 
to talents. 

321, 12, 13. On that Twentieth of June : " In the begin- 
ning of 1792 he became captain of artillery (unattached) ; 
and happening to be in Paris, witnessed the lamentable 
scenes of the twentieth of June, when the revolutionary 
mob stormed the Tuileries, and the king and his family, 
after undergoing innumerable insults and degradations, 
barely preserved their lives. Of Louis XVI, who appeared 
at the balcony, he said, ' Poor driveller ! How could he 
suffer this rabble to enter ? If he had swept away five or 
six hundred with his cannon, the rest might be running 
yet.' " Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, Ch. I. 

321, 16, 17. On the Tenth of August : Date when the 
royal family took refuge in National Assembly and many 
Swiss guards were massacred. See Hazlitt's Life of Napo- 
leon, Vol I, Ch. V. 

321, 21, 22. brilliant Italian Campaigns: 1796-1797; 
battles of Millesimo, Leghorn, Lonato, etc. See Hazlitt's 
Life of Napoleon, Vol. I, Chs. IX and X ; also Guizot's His- 
tory of France, VI, Ch. VI. 

321, 22. Peace of Leoben : April 18, 1797. See Haz- 
litt's Life of Napoleon, Vol. II, Ch. XIIL 

322, 4. Wagrams: Conquest of Austrians, July 6, 
1809. 



. NOTES 401 

Austerlitzes : Dec. 2, 1805. 

322, 12. Petit Caporal : Napoleon was captain of artil- 
lery, 1792, and commander-in-chief of Army of Interior, 
1795; tie was often called "Little Buonaparte" or "Little 
Captain." 

322, 12, 13. put him there : Napoleon was declared 
Emperor of the French, May 18, 1804. 

322, 15. Lieutenant of La Fdre : In August, 1785, when 
sixteen years old, he was appointed second lieutenant in the 
artillery regiment La F^re. 

322, 18, 19. charlatan-element : Cf. W. M. Sloan's Life 
of Napoleon, Vol. Ill, Ch. XIX, p. 192 (1897) : "It seemed 
to Napoleon that in order to secure popular good will he 
must restore prosperity which was not easy and to assert a 
moral ascendancy over his court he must make a suitable 
match, which was easy enough. Neither must be half done ; 
his prestige required a great stroke," etc. See, also, Car- 
lyle's Frederick the Great, Vol. Ill, 277, Sham-Napoleon ; 
also Guizot's History of France, VIII, Ch. XVIL 

322, 21, 22. Austrian Dynasties: The reference is to 
the divorce of Josephine and marriage with Maria Louisa of 
Austria, April 2, 1810. 

322,24. found "his Dynasty": His son, King of 
Rome, was born April 20, 1811. 

323, 5. Pope's-Concordat : The recognition of Catholi- 
cism as National Church, etc. See Lockhart's Life of 
Napoleon, Ch. XXVII ; also Guizot's History of France, 
VI, Ch. VI. 

323, 8. Coronations : Dec. 2, 1805, at Notre Dame, Paris, 
where he insisted that the pope should come to crown him ; 
he was crowned later, also, at Milan. 

323, 11. Augereau: General Augereau, later Duke of 
Castiglione, victor at Lonato, 1796. 

323, 13. Cromwell's Inauguration : This was more elabo- 
rate than Carlyle represents. See Church's Oliver Cromwell, 
Ch. XXII, p. 395. 

323, 21. Dupeability: An unusual but effective word; 

2d 



402 LECTURES ON EEB0E8 

see same thought in Scott's Life of Napoleon, Vol. Ill, 
Ch. XIV. 

323, 23. build upon cloud : The reference is to Nephe- 
lococcygia, a town in the clouds. See Aristophanes, The 
Birds. 

323, 28. Lead us not : See Matt, vi : 13 ; Luke xi : 4. 

324, 8. Duke of Weimar : Charles Augustus, 1775-1828. 
Goethe's friend and patron. 

324, 17. Bookseller, Palm: This Naumburg bookseller 
published a pamphlet accusing Napoleon of ambition. He 
was seized and shot at once ; similar punishments were 
meted to .Duke d'Enghien of Ettingen and Sir George Kum- 
bold at Hamburg. 

324, 31. ebauche : Literally, a first draught or sketch. 
325, 10. Isle of Oleron : Uliarus, in Atlantic. 

325, 22. pedestal to France and him: "Napoleon con- 
fessed more than once at Longwood that he owed his down- 
fall to nothing but the extravagance of his errors. ' It 
must be owned,' said he, 'that fortune spoiled me.'" 
Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, Ch. XLII. Eor comparison of 
Napoleon and Frederick, see Carlyle's Frederick the Great, 
Vol. I, pp. 6, 7, 13. 

326, 23. Good be, etc. : For similar ending see Carlyle's 
Lectures on The History of Literature, p. 225 (New York, 
1892). 






INDEX TO TEXT 



A more detailed Index to Notes and Introduction, supple- 
mentary to this general Index to Carlyle's text, will be found 
pp. 407-417. 



Ableman, 263, 264, 267. 

Aegir, Eager, 25. 

Ali, 78. 

Allegory, 7, 8, 129, 130. 

Ambition, true and false, 297, 

298, 300, 301. 
Anarchy, 166, 312. 
Arabia and the Arabs, 63-65, 

74, 103. 
Art of writing, 214. 
Atheism, 232, 236. 

Balder, 24, 46. 

Belief, 159, 232, 233, 273. 

Benthamism, 231. 

Black Stone, 66. 

Books and Book-writers, 212, 
214-217. 

Bungler, Stumper, 210. 

Burns, Robert, early life, 252- 
254; versatility, 255; resem- 
blance to Mirabeau, 256, 257 ; 
robustness, 256 ; sincerity, 
258 ; visit to Edinburgh, 259, 
260. 

Byron, 127, 223. 

Caabah, 66. 
Canopus, 12. 
Cant, 164, 244. 
Charles I, 286, 287. 



Chinese, 226. 

Choosers of the Slain, 42. 

Cromwell, false view, 278, 279 ; 
ambition, 285 ; practical eye, 
287; speeches, 293, 303, 312- 
314 ; hypocrisy, 294, 306. 

Czar of Russias, 153. 

Dante, life, 115-117; song, 120; 

intensity, 123 ; painting, 124- 

126 ; sincerity, 132. 
David, 62. 
Democracy, 220. 
Denial of Self, 76, 100. 
Dilettantism, 98, 112. 
Divine Idea of the World, 107. 
Divine Man, 68, 171. 
Divine Right of Kings, 265. 

Eddas, 22, 23, 29, 41. 
Eighteenth Century, 228. 
Emblems, 13. 
Empire of Routine, 227. 
Empire of Silence, 299. 
Eternity, Time, 4, 119, 193. 

Faults, 62. 

Forms, true and false, 275. 
Formulas, 241, 242. 
Fox, the, — vulpine intellect, 
143. 



403 



404 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



French Revolution, 60, 159, 183, 
191, 268, 269, 317. 

Giant Skrymir, 49. 
Goethe, 109, 140, 210, 211. 
Government, 219. 
Great Men, 2, 57, 105, 282, 
283. 

Happiness, 95. 

Hegira, 81. 

Heroarchy, 15. 

Heroes, 1, 37, 56, 170, 207, 208, 

290. 
Hero-worship, 14, 15, 16, 20, 

246, 270, 271. 
Hierarchy, 16. 

History, Universal, 1, 18, 39. 
Honour, 94. 
Hynde Etin, 48. 

Iceland, 21. 

Ideals, 263, 264. 

Idolatries, 73, 84, 161, 162, 163, 

164. 
Infinite, the, 17, 61. 
Islam, 75, 76. 

Johnson, Samuel, sufferings, 
239 ; originality, 240 ; sincer- 
ity, 241 ; prophet, 244. 

Jotuns, 23, 49, 172. 

Kadi j ah, 71, 77. 

Kingship, 262. 

Knox, early life, 196 ; trials, 
196, 197 ; sincerity, 198 ; nat- 
ure, 201-203. 

Koran, origin, 86 ; style, 87 ; 
sincerity, 90; prophets, 

Koreish, 67, 79. 

Laud, Archbishop, 274, 276. 

Laughter, 146. 

Liberty and Equality, 166, 170. 



Life, a struggle, 63 ; a Fact, 89 ; 
between Eternities, 236. 

Light or lightning, 259. 

Lion-hunters, 261. 

Literary life, wild welter, 224. 

Literature, Apocalypse of Nat- 
ure, 218. ' 

Luther, Martin, Breaker of 
Idols, 164; youth, 170-173 
priest, 174; courage, 178 
trial, 180, 181 ; writings, 186 
belief in Devil, 187. 

Mahomet, Life of, 68-71 
character, 71 ; ambition, 72 
courage, 79; creed, 84, 97 
miracles, 91. 

Man, the fatal, 257; the holy, 
14, 272. 

Mecca, 66, 67. 

Mechanism of Universe, 28, 
231. 

Men, Great, 2, 57, 105. 

Men of Letters, 206, 221 ; gen- 
uine and spurious, 208. 

Mimes, 252. 

Miracles, 93, 171. 

Month Ramadham, 74, 100. 

Music, 157. 

Mythuses, 45, 51. 

Nature, preternatural, 10, 13, 
40, 83 ; various aptitudes, 106. 

Norse System, 25-28, 38, 39, 
54, 229. 

Odin, name, 31 ; Runes, 36, 37; 

Type Norseman, 38; as God, 

38. 
Olaf, 53. 

Order, Truth, 203, 273. 
Originality, 61, 240. 

Paganism, 4, 5, 9. 
" pe7ited hredd,'' 198. 



INDEX TO TEXT 



405 



Persiflage, 18, 19, 250. 
Pilgrim's Progress, 8, 
Poet, 104, 105, 110, 140, 141. 
Poetry, 109 ; saints of, 114. 
Popery, 177, 178, 184. 
Poverty, 222, 223. 
Prayer, 292. 
Priest, 154, 155. 
" private judgment," 166, 167. 
Prophet, 58, 59. 

Protestantism, 165, 182, 183, 191. 
Puritanism, 102, 191, 192. 
Puritans, 274, 276-278, 280. 

Quackery and quacks, 5, 234, 

264, 289. 
Queen Mary, 199, 200. 

Raphael, 125. 
Reformation, 181, 182. 
Reformers, 156, 157, 205. 
Religion, 3, 15, 35, 81, 136, 137, 

160. 
Repentance, 62, 128. 
Right and Wrong, 101. 
Rousseau, face, 247; Egoism, 

248 ; prophet, 249, 250 ; Books, 

250; Evangelist of French 

Revolution, 251. 

Sabeans, 12. 

Scepticism, 4, 59, 230, 233, 234, 

288. 
Science, 10, 11, 23, 93. 
Scotch Literature and Thought, 

195. 
Scotland at time of Knox, 193, 

194. 



Shakspeare and Dante, 135 ; 
early life, 136 ; gift of Nature, 
137 ; great intellect, 138, 143 ; 
sonnets, 145 ; historical plays, 
146, 147 ; scroll, 148 ; no scep- 
tic, 149 ; King, 152. 

Simulacrum, 61, 235. 

Sincerity, 60, 168. 

Song, 121. 

Speciosities, 59. 

Syrian Sects, 85. 

Taxes, 281, 282. 

Teachers and Teaching, 215. 

Theocracy, 203, 204. 

Thought, 27, 28, 220, 221, 257. 

Tolerance, 185, 201. 

Tree of Existence, 27. 

Truth, 83, 98, 167, 168. 

Understanding, not a tool, 

226. 
Universe a Mystery, 11, 107, 

155. 
University, a Collection of 

Books, 217. 
Utilitarians, 134, 151, 152, 201, 

229, 230, 231. 

Valour, 43. 
Voltaire, 18, 19. 
Voluspa, 45. 

Well Zemzem, 66. 

World, Temple, 85; Divine 

Idea of, 107; godless, 228, 

235. 
Worship, 12, 13, 219. 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTRO- 
DUCTION 



The topics in italics are the authorities quoted from or re- 
ferred to in the Notes. 



Abdallah, 353. 

Abd al Motalleb, 353. 

Abelard, 379. 

Account of Embassy, An, Tur- 
ner, 340. 

Adumbla, Cow, 348. 

Aegir, 344. 

Aer bruno, 364. 

iEschylus, 369. 

Agamemnon, 348. 

Age of Fable, Bulfinch, 382. 

Agincourt, battle of, 368. 

Aids to Reflection, Coleridge, 
341, 358. 

Alexis, 371. 

Ali, 355. 

*'A11 was Godlike," 341. 

Allegory, 340 ; Dante's, 365. 

Alti guai, 362. 

Ambition, two kinds, 395. 

American Backwoods, 350. 

Amleth, 349. 

Among my Books, Lowell, 365, 
366, 367, 368, 385. 

Anabaptists, 373. 

Annals, Muir, 355. 

Annihilation of Self, 354. 

Anson's Voyages, 344. 

Antseus-like, 396. 

Antoinette, Queen, 343. 



Apocalypse of Nature, 361. 
Apollodorus, 396. 
Appeals to Mothers, 384. 
Arabia and Arab character, 

352. 
Argyles, 396. 
Arundel-marble, 346. 
Asgard, 343. 
Atahualpa, 347. 
Athanasiuses, 346. 
Augereau, 401. 

Austerlitz, battle of, 359, 401. 
Austrian Dynasties, 401. 
Awful Unnamable, 399. 
Ayesha, 355. 

Bacon, 366, 367. 

Balder, 344. 

Balder Dead, Arnold, 348, 350. 

Ballads and Songs of Scotland, 

Murray, 349. 
Banyan-tree, 348. 
Barebones's Parliament, 398. 
Baresark, 391. 
Beatrice, 361. 
Bedford Fens, 392. 
Bedlam, 389. 
Bedouin, 357. 
Beginniyigs of New England, 

The, Fiske, 375, 377. 



407 



408 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



Bellarmine, 371. 

Bentham, 358, 381: Bentham- 
ism, 381. 

Bianchi-Neri, 362. 

Biblical References, 340, 341, 
342, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 
357, 358, 359, 360, 363, 364, 
366, 368, 369, 371, 373, 374, 
377, 378, 379, 381, 383, 384, 
389, 395, 396, 402. 

Biographia Literaria, Cole- 
ridge, 363. 

Biography, the true history, 
xvi, xxiv, 339. 

Black malady, .381. 

Black Stone, 353. 

Blake, Admiral, 348. 

Bleak House, Dickens, 396. 

Blot upon the Brahi, Ireland, 
356. 

Blumine of Sartor Kesartus, 
xiii. 

Boccaccio, 359. 

Bookseller Oshorne, 382. 

Bookseller Palm, 402. 

Bos well, James, 383. 

Boswell's Johnson, see John- 
sou. 

Bourrieune, 400. 

Brave Little Holland, Gri^s, 
375. 

British Monachism, Fosbroke, 
370. 

Brobdingnagiau, 345. 

Bruuetto Latini, 363. 

Buller, Charles, xi. 

Burke, Edmund, 380. 

Burns, Critical Essay, Car- 
lyle, 386, 387. 

Burns, Life and Lands of, 
Cunningham, 386, 387. 

Burns, Life of, Lockhart, 386, 
387. 

Burns, Robert: compared to 
Mirabeau, 359, 387; dialect, 



386; early life, 386; ver- 
satility, 386; "fire-flies," 
387. 
Byronism of taste, 364. 

Caabah, 353. 

Cagliostro, xv, 351. 

Cagliostro's Stammbaum, 
Goethe, 352. 

Calases, 343. 

Caliph Thrones, 365. 

Camille Desmoulins, 388. 

Can della Scala, 362. 

Canto fermo, 363. 

Caput-mortuum, 381. 

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, xii, xiv, 
XV, xxi. 

Carlyle Personally, etc., Mas- 
soti, X, xix. 

Carlyle, Thomas : bibliography, 
xxxiv-xxxvi; biography, x- 
xxi ; literary summary, xxxi- 
xxxiii. (Carlyle's writings 
are indexed under their 
separate titles.) 

Carlyle, Thomas, Comoay, x, 
367. 

Carlyle, Thomas, Froude, ix, 
xvi, xviii, xx, xxi, xxiv, 
xxix, 348, 352, 357, 358, 371, 
375, 377, 378, 384, 388, 389, 
392, 393, 396, 399. 

Carlyle, Thomas, Garnett, x, 
xxi. 

Carmen, Horace, 370. 

Cat, Loki's, 349. 

Catholicism abolished, 366. 

Cato, 395. 

Cavalcante, 363. 

Celia . . . Clifford, 379. 

Century Dictionary, 339, 341, 
342, 352, 384. 

Cestus of Venus, 346. 

Chancery Law-Courts, 396. 

Charlemagne : conversion of 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 409 



Saxons, 355 ; founder of Uni- 
versity, 379. 

Charles V, Emperor, 373. 

Chartism, xix, 382. 

Chiaroscuro, 361. 

Chief Actors in Purita7i Revo- 
lution, Batjne, 390, 397, 398. 

Childe Harold, Byron, 363, 365. 

Chillingworth, 393. 

Chinese, The, Martin, 380. 

Choiseul, 399. 

Chosroes, 354. 

Church of St. Clement Danes, 
383. 

Citation and Examination, 
etc., Landor, 366. 

Clarendon, 393. 

Clouting, 357. 

Columbus, 370. 

Conquest of Granada, Irving, 
359. 

Conquest of Peru, Prescott, 347. 

Conscript Fathers, 391. 

Consecration of Valour, 350. 

Constance Council, 372. 

Constitutional History, Hal- 
lam, 375, 376, 391, 397. 

Contrat-Social, 384. 

Contemporary Thought, etc., 
Hutton, xxii. 

Copy-wrongs, 378. 

Corrected Impressions, Saints- 
bury, xvii. 

Corsica Boswell, 394. 

Cowper, poor poet, 374. 

Cranach, see Kranach. 

Cranmer, 370. 

Critical Miscellanies, Morley, 
xxvii, 364, 367. 

Cromwell, Oliver : biographers, 
391; ambition, 395; charac- 
ter, 394, 396 ; despotism, 396 ; 
speeches, 398. 

Cromivell, Oliver, Church, 391, 
392, 397, 398, 401. 



Cromwell, Oliver, Palgrave, 
391. 

Cromwell, Oliver, Southey, 392. 

Cromwell's Letters and 
Speeches, Carlyle, xix, 391, 
392, 393, 396, 397, 398, 399. 

Dante: life, 361, 362; song, 

363. 
Dante, A Shadow of, M. F. 

Rossetti, 362. 
Dante and his Circle, D. G. 

Rossetti, 361. 
Dasent, G. W., see Eddas. 
Decline and Fall, Gibbon, 352, 

354, 355, 357. 
Delhi, 353. 
Deliquium, 351. 
Delirations, 384. 
Descent of Odin, Gray, 348. 
Diana of the Crossways, Mere- 
dith, 385. 
Die Gotter Griechenlands, 

Schiller, 360. 
Digression sur les Anciens, 

Fontenelle, 342. 
Dilettantism, 358. 
Diocletian, 396. 
Diodorus Siculus, 353. 
Dios, 347. 

Disjecta membra, 368. 
Distinctive Messages, etc., 

Matheson, 347. 
Divine Comedy, 362. 
Doctrine of Motives, 381. 
Dogberry, 368. 
Don Juan, Byron, 359. 
Douanier, 343. 
Duke George, 374. 
Duke of Weimar, 402. 
Dunbar, battle, 392. 
Dunciad, Pope, 382. 
Dupeability, 401. 

Earl of Morton, 376. 



410 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



Early Kings of Norway, Car- 

lyle, xxi, 350. 
Earthly Paradise, The, Morris, 

344. 
:6bauche, 402. 
Eck, John, 371. 
Eclogues, 370. 
Eddas, Elder and Younger, 

343, 344, 345, 347, 348, 349. 
Eliot, John, 390. 
Ely, 392. 

Encyclopedies, 399. 
English Literature, Taine, 

xxvii, 361. 
Epic of the Inner Life, Genung, 

352. 
Essay on Man, Pope, 354. 
Essays, Carlyle's Critical and 

Miscellaneous, xiii, xiv, 339, 

340, 341, 342, 343, 349, 351, 

354, 359, 360, 366, 367, 375, 

378, 382, 385. 
Essays, Be Quincey, 366. 
Essays, Emerson, 339, 394. 
Essays, Hume, 339, 340, 390. 
Essays, Macaulay, 359, 364, 

383, 391. 
Essays, Masson, 374. 
Essays, Mozley, 388, 390, 392, 

398. 
Essays, Schiller, 360. 
Essays in Criticism, Arnold, 

361. 
Essays in English Literature, 

Sherer, 367. 
Essays in Literary Interpreta- 
tion, Mabie, 365. 
Euphemisms, 393. 

Faiths of the World, The, 350. 

Falkland, 393. 

Familiar Quotations, Bartlett, 

383. 
Familiar Studies, Stevenson, 

377. 



Farinata, 363. 

Fatal Sisters, The, Gray, 347, 

348. 
Faust, Goethe, 340. 
Feruey, 343. 
Festus, Bailey, 360. 
Fichte, 378 ; Sammt. Werke, 378. 
First Voyage, Magellan, 344. 
Florentine Histories, Machia- 

velli, 362. 
Flower in the Crannied Wall, 

Tennyson, 342. 
Fontenelle, 394. 
Force, 341. 
Formula, 383. 
Four Frenchwomen, Bohson, 

384. 
Francesca and her lover, 364. 
Frasej^'s Magazine, xv, xvi. 
Frederick the Great, Carlyle, 

XX, 371, 393, 402. 
Freemason's Tavern, 366. 
French Revolution, Carlyle, 

xvi, 342, 345, 352, 371, 381, 

384, 386, 387, 388, 389, 395, 399. 
FreycineVs Voyage, 344. 
Friend, The, Cole^^dge, 370, 

374, 383, 385, 395. 
Froude's biography, see Carlyle. 
Fue, 363, 364. 

Ganger, Burns, 380. 

Gehenna, 365. 

Gemma, 362. 

Genlis, Countess, 384. 

German Critics, 360. 

German Literature, xii, xiii, 

378. 
German Literature, Menzel,M9. 
German Philosopher, 349. 
Giant Skrymir, 349. 
Gibbon, 395. 
Giotto, 361. 
Giovanna, 365. 
Glorious Revolution, 376. 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 411 



God in Shakspeare, " Clelia," 

368. 
God Wiinsch, 344. 
Godwin, 398. 
Goethe, xii, xiii, 367, 378, 389; 

Fans', 340 ; Werke, 381. 
Goethe-Carlyle Corresp o n d- 

ence, xiii, 374, 378. . 
Granada, 359. 
Grand Lamaism, 340. 
Gray's fragments, 348. 
Gj'eat Civil War, Gardiner, 

393. 
Great Men, 339, 342, 351. 
Grimm, 344, 346. 
Grotius, 351. 
Guelf-Ghibelline, 362. 
Guises, 377. 

Gustavus-Adolphus, 375. 
Gutenberg, 379. 

Habeas-Corpus enacted, 390. 

Hall of Dite, 363. 

Hall of Odin, 347. 

Hamlet, 368 ; source, 349. 

Hammer, Thor's, 344, 348. 

Hampden, John, 390. 

Hampton-Court, 392. 

Hara, Mount, 354. 

Harold, Lytton, 345. 

Harz-rock, 386. 

Hebrew Book, 379. 

Hegira, 355. 

HeimsJcringla, 346, 348, 350. 

Heine, 374. 

Hmry IV, 383, 384. 

Henry V, 368. 

H-nry VI, 351. 

Heraclius, 354, 358. 

Hermoder, 349. 

Hero, at all points, xxvi, 351. 

Hero-worship, origin of term, 

339 ; gone out, 342. 
Heroes and Hero-Worship, Car- 

lyle, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxix. 



Heroes of the Mission Field, 

Walsh, 345. 
Herodotus, 350. 

Higher Pantheism, The, Ten- 
nyson, 341. 
Hildebrand, 377. 
Hindoo Mythologist, 349. 
Historical Studies, Lawrence, 

346, 372. 
History, Universal, 339. 
History of England, Hi(me,S7Q, 

372, 376, 377^ 381 , 390, 392, 396. 
History of France, Guizot, 343, 

385,400,401. 
History of Richard Crotnwell, 

Guizot, 390. 
History of Spanish Literature, 

Ticknor, 346. 
History of the Puritans, Neal, 

375. 
Hodman, A., 378. 
Hogstraten, 371. 
Homoiousion, 355. 
Homoousiou, 355, 356. 
Horse-shoe vein, 353. 
Hours in a Library, Stephen, 

374, 383. 
House built of glass, 394. 
Hrolf, 348. 
Hud, Prophet, 357. 
Hudibras, Butler, 390, 397. 
Hume, David, 376, 396. 
Huntingdon Physician, 391. 
Huss, 372. 
Hustings, 366. 
Hutchinson, Colonel, 399. 
Hymir. 344. 
Hyper-Brobdingnagian, 345. 

Igdrasil, 345. 

Iliad, The, Homer, 347, 348. 
Imbroglio, 340. 

Immutable, The, Schiller, 350. 
Inferno, Dante, 362, 363, 364, 
370. 



412 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



Infinite conjugation of verb, 

to do, 345. 
In Memoriam, Tennyson, 381. 
In the Key of Blue, etc., 

Symonds, 361. 
Introcluctio7i to Study of Dante, 

Symonds, 363, 364, 365. 
Introduction to Study of 

Shakespeare, Corson, 367. 
Invasions, Danish, 344. 
Ironsides, Cromwell's, 392. 
Irving, Edward, xi. 
Islam, 354. 

Island of Sumatra, 387. 
Isle of Oleron, 402. 

Jack the Giant-killer, 349. 

Janszoon, 379. 

Jerome, 372. 

Job, Book of, 352. 

Johnson, Samuel : poverty, 

380 ; shoes, 383 ; writings, 383. 
Johnson, Life of, Boswell, 380, 

381, 382, 383. 
Johnson, Life of, Stephen, 382, 

394. 
Jokuls, 343. 
Jonson, Ben, 350. 
Joseph Balsamo, Dumas, 352. 
Jotunheim, 343. 

Kadijah, xiv, 354. 
Karlstadt's image-breaking, 

373. 
Keblah, 353. 
King, derivation, 342; divine 

right, 388. 
King Henrys, 366. 
Knox, John : character, 376 ; 

Historic, 376; influence, 377; 

intolerance, 377. 
Knox, Life of, McCrie, 376, 

377. 
Koran, 356 ; commentaries, 

356; quotations, 357. 



Koran, Wherry's Commentary 

on, 352, 355, 356. 
Kranach, 375. 

La carriere, etc., 400. 
Ladrones Islands, 343, 344. 
Latter-Day Pamphlets, Car- 

lyle, xix. 
Laud, Archbishop, 390. 
Leaders of the Reformation, 

Tulloch, 373, 376. 
Lectures, Emerson, 388. 
Lectures on History of Litera- 
ture, Carlyle, xvii, 388, 396, 

402. 
Leoben, Peace of, 400. 
Lessons from my Masters, 

Bayne, xxv. 
Letters on Esthetic Culture, 

Schiller, 347. 
Letters to Dead Authors, Lang, 

387. 
Levana, Richter, 342. 
Ley den jars, 341, 
Lieutenant of La Fere, 401. 
Life Without and Life Within, 

'Fuller, 398. 
Literary Ethics, Emerson, 360. 
Literary Portraits, Sainte- 

Beuve, 384, 385, 389. 
Literature of Desperation, 

385. 
Lives of Greek Stafsmen, Cox, 

379.' 
Lives of the Fathers, Farrar, 

342. 
Loadstar, 382. 

Locksley Hall, Tennyson, 345. 
Lope, 346. 
Love-locks, 392. 
Love of Fame, Young, 395. 
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 366, 369. 
Luther's Leben, Kostlin, 375. 
Luther, Life of, Froude, 371, 

373, 374. ' 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 413 



Luther, Life of, Michelet, 371, 
372, 373, 374, 375. 

Luther, Martin : character, 372 ; 
defiance to Pope, 372, 373; 
theses, 372 ; WerJce, 372, 373. 

Luther, Martin ; Study of Re- 
formation, Mead, 373. 

Macbeth, 348. 

Machine of the Universe, 345. 

Mahomet : biographers, 351 ; 

current hypothesis, 351; 

dangers, 355; miracles, 357; 

temperament, 356, 357. 
Mahomet and his Successors, 

Irving, 351, 353, 355,356, 359. 
Mahomet, Critical Examina^ 

tion, Ali Ameer, 351. 
Mahomet, Life of, Muir, 351, 

353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358. 
Mahomet, Life of, Prideaux, 

354. 
Makers of Florence, Mrs. Oli- 

phant, 361, 362. 
Malays, 359. 
Malebolge Pool, 362. 
Man of Letters, 378. 
Marlborough, Duke of, 368. 
Marshals of Louis XIV, 359. 
Mary Stuart, 377; Lamartine, 

377 ; Sioinburne, 377. 
Mayflower, The, 375. 
Mazzini, -"^oseph, xxiv. 
Meister, see Wilhelm Meister. 
Memoirs of Great Com- 
manders, James, 359. 
Memoires sur Voltaire, 342. 
Men, Women, and Books, Bir- 

rell, 383. 
Mendicant Orders, 380. 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 366. 
Metam., Ovid, 349, 370, 373, 382. 
Milton, John, 398. 
Mimer-smithy, 350. 
Mimes, 386. 



Mirabeau : sincerity, 352; am- 
bition, 395. 

Mirabeau, old Marquis, 386. 

Modern Guides to English 
Thought, Hutton, xxii, xxiii, 
341, 344. 

Mohammed, das Leben, 
Sprenger, 351, 353. 

Mohammed, der Prophet, Weil, 
351, 356. 

Mohra, 371. 

Monarchy of Man, 391. 

Month Ramadhan, 354. 

Montrose, 397. 

Much Ado About Nothing, 368. 

Mystery of Time, 341. 

Mystic, unfathomable Song, 
361. 

Napoleon : campaigns, 400 ; 

charlatan-element, 401; 

power, 401. 
Napoleon at St. Helena, Abbott, 

400. 
Napoleon, Life of, Hazlitt, 

400. 
Napoleon, Life of, Lockhart, 

400, 402. 
Napoleon, Life of, Sloane, 401. 
Napoleon, Life of, Scott, 400, 

402. 
Nature and Elements of 

Poet7n/, Stedman, 361. 
Necker, 395. 
Nelson, 348; Life of, Mahan, 

348. 
Nem., Pindar, 350. 
Nephelococcygia, 402. 
Nescience, 340, 341. 
Nessus'-shirt, 382. 
New Holland, 369. 
Newspapers, pulpit, 379. 
Niebuhr, 389. 
Ni7ie Worlds, The, Litchfield, 

343. 



414 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



Norman Conquest, The, Free- 
man, 380. 

Normas, 345. 

Norse Mythology, Anderson, 
344, 346. 

Northern Antiquities, Mallet, 
344, 347, 348, 349, 350. 

Northern Mythology , Thorpe, 
343, 344, 345, 349^ 

Novalis, 342. See also Schrif- 
ten. 

Novum Organum, 366. 

Obiter Dicta, Birrell, 384. 

Odin, Wuotan, 346 ; a God, 347. 

(Edipus, Dryden, 354. 

Olaf, 350. 

Olymph., Pindar, 350. 

On an Honest Man's Fortune, 

Fletcher, 358. 
Open secret, 360, 369. 
Orpheus, 370. 
Orson, 396. 

Osborne, Bookseller, 382. 
Othello, 394. 

Paley, 358. 

Pandora, Rossetti, 381. 

Pandora's Box, 381. 

Papuans, 359. 

Paracelsus, Browning , 360. 

Paradise and the Peri, Moore, 
350. 

Paradise Lost, Milton, 382. 

Paradiso, Dante, 364. 

Paramatta, 369. 

Parliament: Barebones's, 398; 
Long, 396; Free, 397; Pe- 
dant, 398 ; Rump, 397. 

Parliamentary History, 397. 

Past and Present, Carlyle, xix, 
342, 345, 351, 358, 370, 378, 
379, 380, 388, 393, 394. 

Pastorals, Pope, 350. 

Peasant Covenanters, 376. 



Peasants' War, 374. 
Pericles, 379. 
Persifleur, 343. 
Petit Caporal, 401. 
Petrach, 359. 
Pbalaris'-Bull, 381. 
Philistine Mill, 381. 
Philosophical Essays, Hume, 

339, 340. 
Phoenix fire-death, 350. 
Piasters, 365. 
Pie-powder court, 393. 
Pilgrim in Old England, The, 

Bradford, 375, 377. 
Pindar's time, 350. 
Pitt, William, 380. 
Plato's fancy, 340; Republic, 

340 ; Charmides, 346. 
Plutus, 363. 
Pococke, 351. 
Poems of Pilgrims, 375. 
Poetry, definition of, 360, 361. 
Pombal, 398. 

Pontiff of Encyclopedism, 343. 
Pope's-Concordat, 401. 
Pope's Homer, 348. 
Portraits des Femmes, Sainte- 

Beuve, 385. 
Po7'traits of John Knox, Car- 
lyle, xxi, 376, 377. 
Preliminary Discourse, Sale, 

352, 356, 357. 
Presbyterianism, 375. 
Present Crisis, The, Lowell, 

370. 
Prideaux, 356. 
Pride's Purges, 397. 
Priest, prophet, 369. 
Printer Cave, 380. 
Printing, invention of, 379. 
Progress of Poesy, Gray, 367. 
Progress of species, 370. 
Prose Writers of Germany, 

Hedge, 378. 
Proverbes en Rimes, 394. 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTBOBUCTION 415 



Punctum saliens, 380. 
Purgatorio, Dante, 365, 
Pym, 391. 
Pythian, Pindar, 381, 382. 

Quackery, 340. 

Quintus Fixlein, Richter, 341. 

Quran, see Koran. 

Racine, 389. 
Radish, a forked, 383. 
Ragnarok, 350. 
Raleigh, Walter, 370. 
Recognition of forces, etc., 344. 
Redgauntlet, Scott, 353, 354. 
Reform Bill, 398. 
Regent Murray, 377. 
Regiment La Fere, 401. 
Reigns of terror, 389. 
Religion of Shakespeare, The, 

Robertson, 368. 
Reminiscences, Carlyle, x, xi, 

xviii, xxi, 380, 384. 
Richter, xii, 341, 342. 
Rochesters, 390. 
Romeo and Juliet, 373. 
Rousseau: Emile, 384, 385; 

Confessions, 385; prophet, 

385 ; music, 387. 
Rousseau, Morley, 384, 385, 399. 
Runes, 347. 

Sabeans, 352. 

Sacred Tree, The, Philpot, 345. 

Sadakat, 358. 

Ssemund, see Eddas. 

St. Andrew's Castle, 376. 

St. Chrysostom, 342. 

St. Dominic, 369. 

St. Helena, 400. 

St. Ives, 392. 

St. Pierre, 385. 

St. Stephen's, 366. 

Sale, George, 352. 

Sansculottism, 371, 388. 



Sartor Resartus, Carlyle, xii, 
xiv, xvi, 339, 341, 342, 357, 
361, 371, 378, 379, 381, 382, 
385, 388, 390, 399. 

Savant, 400. 

Saxo Grammaticus, 346. 

Scandinavian Paganism, 344, 
347. 

Sceptical Dilettantism, 399. 

Schiller, Life of, Carlyle, 347. 

Schlegel, August, 368. 

Schonberg-Cotta Family, Mrs. 
Charles, 375. 

Schools of Charles the Great, 
The, Mullinger, 379. 

Schj^iften, Novalis, 342, 354, 366, 
367, 384, 389. 

Schweidnitz Fort, 371. 

Scorn not the Sonnet, Words- 
worth, 367. 

Scott, Walter, 385. 

Scroll, Shakespeare's, 368. 

Sergius, the Monk, 353. 

Sesame and Lilies, Ruskin, 
365, 367, 368. 

Shadow of Dante, A., M. F. 
Rossetti, 363. 

Shakspeare, intellect, 366 ; 
dramas, 366 ; gift of nature, 
366 ; king, 369. 

Shakspeare and Dante, 365. 

Sheik, 354. 

Shekinah, 342. 

Ship-moneys, 391. 

Shorter History of English Peo- 
ple, Green, 367, 375, 376, 389, 
390, 396, 397, 399. 

Silence, Empire of, 394. 

Silvestre de Sacy, 353. 

Simon de Montfort, 390. 

Sinai, Mount, 354. 

crK€\f/cs, 381. 

Sketches and Travels, Thack- 
eray, 368. 

Sketch Book, Irving, 369. 



416 



LECTURES ON HEROES 



Skrymir, 349. 

Smith, Adam, Rae, 346. 

Songs and Sagas of the Horse- 
men, Major, 348. 

Southey, Robert, 380. 

Spirit of lies, 384. 

Stael, Madame de, 385. 

Starchamber hangmen, 375. 

Statesmen of the Com,mon- 
wealth, Forster, 390, 391. 

Staupitz, John von, 372. 

Stocks, 340. 

Stories retold from the Eddas, 
Mabie, 345. 

Studies in Religious History, 
Renan, 356. 

Sturleson, Snorro, 343. 

Symbol . . . the Universe, 340. 

Table-Talk, Coleridge, 352. 

Table-Talk, Cowper, 395. 

Tacitus, 363. 

Tales of a Wayside Inn, Long- 
fellow, 344. 

Tartufe, 391. 

Tempest, The, 349, 350, 368. 

Ten Great Religions, Clarke, 
355, 380. 

Terza rima, 363. 

Tetzel, 371. 

Teutonic Mythology, Grimm, 
344, 346. 

Thalaba, Southey, 370. 

Tliaumaturgic, 380. 

Thebaid Eremites, 370. 

Theog., Hesiod, 381. 

Thirty Years' War, Schiller, ^Ib. 

Thor, 344. 

Three Days of July, 389. 

Three Estates, 380. 

Tieck, 363. 

Time, a Mystery, 341 ; resting 
on eternity, 340. 

Tischreden, Luther, 372, 374. 

Titian, Richter, 342. 



To Robert Browning, Landor, 

369. 
Tophet, 368. 
Torfaeus, 346. 

Tragopodagra, Lucian, 382. 
Treadmill, 369. 

Trebizond, Council of, 345, 346. 
Tree of Existence, 345. 
Trent, Council of, 346. 
Troilus and Cressida, 348, 386. 
Turenne, 359. 
Turner, Samuel, 340. 
Twelve, the number, 346. 
Twilight of the Gods, 350. 

Uhland, 349. 

Ulfila, 345. 

Ultimus Romanorum, 384. 

Universe . . . Thought of God, 

360. 
'TiroKpiT'^s, 394. 
Ushers de Breze, 387. 
Utilitarian spirit, 365. 

Va bon train, 343. 

Valhalla, 347. 

Valkyrs, 347. 

Valour . . . value, 348. 

Vanity Fair, Thackeray, 360. 

Vates, 360. 

Vauxhall, 360. 

Verges, 368. 

Vision of Justice, A, Addison, 

359. 
Vita Nuova, Dante, 361. 
Voltaire and Voltaireism, 342. 
Voltaire, Morley, 343. 
Vorschule, Richter, 374. 
Voyage autour du Monde, 

Freycinet, 344. 
Voyages, Anson's, 344. 
Vulpine intellect, 367. 

Wagrams, 400. 

Walks in London, Hare, 383. 



INDEX TO NOTES AND INTRODUCTION 417 



Walpole, Horace, 382. 

Wandsworth, 347. 

Wansborough, 347. 

Wanstead, 347. 

War of Tabuc, 358. 

War of the Giants, 382. 

War of the Puritans, 390. 

Warwick, Sir Philip, 391 ; Me- 
moirs, 392. 

Warwickshire Squire, 366. 

Washington, George, 396. 

Watt, James, 376. 

Wednesbury, 347. 

Westminster Catechism, 358. 

Westminster Confession, 376. 

Whitehall, 394. 

Wilhelin Meister's Apprentice- 
ship and Travels, Goethe, xii, 
2b 



350, 358, 359, 360, 365, 368, 

393. 
Windbag, 394. 
Witchcraft, 381. 
Witenagemote, 380. 
Women of the Valois Court, 

Saint-Amand, 377. 
Worcester Fight, 391, 392. 
Worms, Diet at, 373. 
Worship, 388 ; worship-wonder, 

341. 
Wotton Reinfred, 357. 
Wuotan, 346. 

Yankee in Canada, xxv, xxvi. 

Zacat, 358. 
Zemzem, Well, 353. 



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to all students of philology." — Home Journal. 

" In respect both of scholarship and of exposition, this volume 
is entitled to high praise. . . . There is no part of this book 
that cannot be read with pleasure as well as profit, and one is 
therefore embarrassed by the wealth of material worthy of 
illustration." — New York Sun. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

QQ FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
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ENGLISH PROSE 

Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers, 
AND General Introductions to Each Period. 

EDITED BY 

HENRY CRAIK, LL.D. 

In Five Volumes. i2mo. 



Volume I. From the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. 
Volume II. The Sixteenth Century to the Restoration. 
Volume III. The Seventeenth Century. 
Volume IV. The Eighteenth Century. 

Volume V. Nineteenth Century from Sir Walter Scott to 
Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Cabinet Edition. Five Volumes in Box, $7.50. 
Student's Edition. Each Volume sold separately. $1.10 per vol. 



COMMENTS. 



" If prose literature can ever be successfully studied by means of 
short extracts, it will be possible to conduct such a study with the aid 
of this book. As a companion book of Ward's ' English Poets ''it 
is very interesting and satisfactory. In the Department of Rhetoric, 
this book will certainly be of greater value than any other work of 
the kind yet published." — PROF. H. H. Neill, Amherst College. 

" Mr. Craik and his coadjutors do their work admirably. Their 
remarks are appropriate, their selection of extracts is felicitous. We 
thank them for not a few happy hours." — Literary World. 

" The extracts are carefully chosen and edited, and a brief sketch 
of each writer is given. These sketches are written by men who edit 
the different sections, and as these men are selected from the fore- 
most of English critics, the result is that the books contain a valu- 
able set of brief essays from able and distinguished pens. George 
Saintsbury, Alfred Ainger, Edmund Gosse,"^ Norman Moore, and 
others besides the editor himself have contributed, and the book 
would have been valuable did it contain nothing but these introduc- 
tory notices. The conclusions of the editors of the different authors 
who have summed up the characteristics of the separate men repre- 
sented in the previous volume, have done their work so well, that 
the student is likely in the end to have a rather better idea of the 
writers than he would gather from his unaided study of the original 
and complete works of these old writers." — Boston Courier. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



THE ENGLISH POETS. 

With Critical INTRODUCTIO^^s by Various Writers and a General 
Introduction by 

MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

edited by 
THOMAS HUMPHRY WARD, M.A. 

In Four Volumes. i2mo. 

Vol. I. Chaucer to Donne. Vol. III. Addison to Blake. 

Vol. II. Ben Jonson to Dryden. Vol. IV. Wordsworth to Tennyson. 

Cabinet Edition. Four Volumes in Box, $5.00. 
Student's Edition. Each Volume sold separately. $1.00 per vol. 



" All lovers of poetry, all students of literature, all readers, will 
welcome the volumes of * The English Poets.' . . . Mr. 
Matthew Arnold has written a most delightful introduction, full 
of wise thought and poetic sensibility. Very few books can be 
named in which so much that is precious can be had in so little 
space and for so little money." — Philadelphia Times. 

"Altogether it would be difficult to select four volumes of 
any kind better worth owning and studying than these." — 
Nation. 

" These four volumes ought to be placed in every library, 
and, if possible, in the hands of every student of English." — 
Churchman. 

" Ward's * English Poets ' has been acknowledged to be one 
of the most serviceable and discriminating contributions to the 
history of English poetry." — Quips. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

QQ FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 







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